All companies in England, Scotland and Wales are legally required to comply with Waste legislation. This requires you to know where your waste is coming from, who is handling it, where it goes to and that those handling it are licensed.

You can reduce your waste impact and cost by reducing the amount of waste you produce, and by managing what happens to the waste you are left with. This is part of the waste hierarchy, which you are also required to demonstrate you have followed, and covers prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery and disposal.

It costs you £84.40 per tonne (landfill tax at the time of writing) of waste you send to landfill, plus whatever rate you are paying your waste contractor. You can reduce this cost by planning what waste you are expecting to produce and identifying ways to increase the amount you reuse or recycle (see our page on resource efficiency for more information).

Breaching the waste legislation can carry large fines, so it is important that you have all the correct documents in order.

Totem Sustainability have extensive experience in waste management and can help you develop procedures to ensure legal compliance, provide training and waste reduction workshops, develop a resource efficiency plan and assess waste contractors.

We have experience managing construction site and office waste compliance, running training and waste reduction workshops and working closely with waste contractors. We have successfully increased “waste diverted from landfill” (reused or recycled) to over 95% and reduced waste production by almost 50%.