If you are a business owner, here are some facts and figures that may interest you:
- It has been estimated that the UK wastes £12 billion on electricity every year. (Source: Fresh Business Thinking)
- The average small business spends roughly 10% of its total overheads solely on electricity. (Source: Fresh Business Thinking)
- Britain's energy reserves are slowly but surely running out (Source: The Economist)
With this information in mind, it's a good idea - from both a financial and an environmental standpoint - for business owners to seek new ways of conserving electricity within the workplace. One effective change that's easy to implement is simply switching things off when you're not using them - this may seem like obvious advice, but it really can make a big difference to your company's energy usage.
Lights are an obvious place to start. If you're using the lights in a room that has plenty of natural light - or, worse still, leaving lights on when nobody's in the room - you are wasting energy, which is costly for your business and bad for the environment. Light switch stickers like these can help to remind you and your employees to swtich off the lights when they're not in use:
Where else could you be saving energy?
- Many appliances use a lot of energy even when switched off. If you're leaving microwaves, televisions, or other items in standby mode instead of turning them off completely, you could well be wasting energy for no reason.
- On a related note, be sure to switch plugs off if they have something plugged into them that isn't being used. This even includes chargers that aren't currently charging anything.
- Be sure to turn off taps properly when not in use - water transportation and treatment uses up energy too!
Useful products from Label Source:
The pressure on organisations, both public and private, to have waste management plans is unswerving, and the challenge to improve is constant. Many EU directives have a direct bearing on the targets laid down for recycling in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Included in the legislation is the Landfill Directive 1999 laying down progressive targets for reducing disposal by landfill; the EU Waste Framework Directive covering a waste hierarchy ranging from prevention, re-use or recycling, energy recovery and disposal; and others such as The Packaging Directive for the recycling of packaging waste.
So no matter if the waste is generated by households, commerce or industry there is an ongoing pressure to improve waste performance, by diverting waste from landfill, improve recycling schemes, and a reduction in overall waste.
Label Source has a range of recycling signs to help manage waste segregation and recovery by clearly identifying waste streams on bins, containers, waste collection sites and waste treatment facilities. Our colour coded WRAP range identifies groupings of waste from automotive, electrical, mixed glass, garden waste, food waste, metals, mixed recycling, paint, plastics, textiles , building materials, and wood and timber. These are suitable for organisations seeking to implement ISO 14001 environmental standards, or for eco-audits.
Here at Label Source, we've got quite the comprehensive range of Environmental Management Signs & Tapes. Most workplaces have an ISO 14001 Environmental Management System in place, so you'll be more than familiar with our various environmental signs and tapes, however, there are still many workplaces who currently don't have an enviornmental management system in place
Recycling Signs
Environmental management systems are designed to help you and your business organisation to reduce waste and help save the planet by helping the environment, and must comply with ISO 14001 which is a set of industry standards for environmental management systems. If your organisation doesn't currently have one in place, then there are a number of simple steps you can take to help recuce your carbon footprint and make your contribution to saving the planet.
The added bonus of having an environmental management system in place is that it will help you keep your business costs down and you'll be wasting fewer resources. So how do you get started?
- Encourage recycling and waste segregation by popping the correct recycling signs above your bins to ensure staff are recycling the appropriate materials
- Make sure all of your bins have the proper wrap recycling signs on them
- Warn of any contaminated areas by ensuring the appropriate labels are in place
- Promote energy-saving practices with signs to ensure staff turn the lights off when they leave
- Prohibit access to spill areas with the appropriate control barrier taps
Spill Control Barrier Tapes
Label Source's range of environmental signs & tapes are broken down into the following categories:
Contaminated Land Signs
All of our Environmental Management products are compliant with ISO 14001 regulations, so if your business is looking to put an environmental management system in place, rest assured you're always in safe hands with Label Source. For any information about our Environmental Signs & Tapes, please call 0800 3761 693.
Resource Conservation Signs & Notices
