Top Ways To Reduce Your Business Waste And Increase Profit Margins

Waste is not commonly thought of as a contribution to loss in profit, however, when it comes to your business outgoings waste is one of the major culprits. Ordering an over-estimation of supplies, and not having proper processes in place to appropriately dispose of waste could be contributing to a substantial decrease in your profit. With a new financial year fast approaching, you may want to reevaluate your companies position on waste to ensure you do not enter into April still working at a loss when the main cause could be under your control all along. Here are some ways your company can be more waste-conscious, and gain respect from your customers and employees at the same time.

Liaise With Your Supplier/ Courier

Depending on your product or products, you may have several suppliers providing a number of deliveries every day. These deliveries may then be repackaged to be couriered to paying customers, and although you may not have any control on the customer end of how their waste is disposed of, you do have control over how much packaging you receive and send your product out in. Especially if your product is imperishable or resilient against breakage, minimal packaging is needed for transportation on both ends. Ensuring your suppliers package your product(s) in as little packaging as possible and requiring the materials used are recyclable will not only reduce your company’s waste but your supplier’s too. The ethical choice to be conscious of your contribution to waste and carbon emissions will help your company to widen its demographic and encourage environment-conscious potential customers to invest their time and money in your company and not a competitor – balancing out the extra cost of sourcing a waste-conscious supplier.

Reevaluate Employee Incentives

Looking after your employees is a must to ensuring the maximization of your business success. However, there may be more profit efficient ways to keeping employee morale and comfortability high. Providing food options like in-office employee lunches, and having fruit and biscuits available for an energy pick me up when needed has proved incredibly effective for team building, and keeping concentration and efficiency levels up. However, taking the time to consider your food waste management, and keeping track of how much food goes to waste each day could prevent you from upping your outgoings on unused supplies. If you find that a lot of food is not being eaten, it may be time to reduce the amount you provide.

Water And Recycling

One of the biggest contributors to your waste will be your employees, if not appropriately trained and encouraged to carry out company processes. Having signs above bins providing information on materials that can be recycled, and a reminder in company toilets to turn taps off before leaving will give a gentle nudge to your employees to consider and contribute to the reduce of company waste. This constant reminder will also help the process to become an automatic habit. Providing reusable bottles – that have the company logo on – will mean they can use the water fountain without having to dispose of an excess of plastic cups every day – and is also a marketing tool for when they are out of office. Plastic is a large problem at the moment, due to the volume that is pumped into the ocean every day, so the advantages of processes such as this should not be ignored.

Hopefully, this has given you some food for thought on how you can help reduce company waste whilst keeping customer and employee happiness in mind.