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The Business of Recycling – WRAP
Guidance for
Health and Social Care
Step 1

Why your Health or Social Care workplace needs to recycle

Overview
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New regulations will soon require your workplace to separate from your general waste, and in this guide we’ll explain what to do to prepare before the 31 March 2025 deadline for businesses with 10 or more full time equivalent employees, or the 31 March 2027 deadline for all businesses. 

Before we get into the details, let’s take a quick look at the background and how recycling can help your workplace.

Good to know

‘Waste’ means any substance or object to be discarded. This includes household materials for disposal (rubbish, in other words!) and recycling. New regulations mean that similar materials produced by businesses and workplaces now need to be separated for recycling. If you use part of your home to run your business, any waste from that part of it also counts as business waste.

Reasons to recycle 

  • Soon to be a legal requirement 

  • Contributes to tackling the effects of the climate emergency 

  • Contributes to the NHS’s Net Zero commitments 

  • Contributes to the Care Quality Commission Single Assessment Framework 

  • Can reduce overall waste management costs 

  • Manages waste in line with good practice 

  • Supports the Circular Economy 

  • Can improve process performance 

  • Positive in attracting, motivating and retaining staff 

Covered in this guide

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  • The Waste Hierarchy in Health and Social Care settings

    Preventing waste in the first place is always the best option, as you can see from the ‘Waste Hierarchy’ below, which ranks waste management options in order of how good they are for the environment. If waste is unavoidable, it should ideally be prepared for reuse, recycled or turned into something else of value (such as energy). Disposal in general waste is the last resort.

    1 min read
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  • The benefits of recycling in Health and Social Care settings

    As a workplace, you’re considered to have a ‘Duty of Care’ to ensure that the waste your workplace generates is produced, stored, transported and disposed of without harming the environment. This is set out in the Environmental Protection Act 1990, but new legislation takes this a step further by making workplace recycling a legal requirement. 

    3 min read
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  • The benefits of reducing food waste in health and social care settings

    Reducing food waste can decrease general waste and save your organisation money.

    4 min read
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  • How to comply with the new business recycling legislation in Health and Social Care settings

    Having looked at the business case for recycling, it’s time to delve into the details of what the new legislation means for your workplace.

    2 min read
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  • Checklist: what your Health and Social Care organisation needs to do to comply

    What your business needs to do to comply:

    2 min read
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