Waste King, the specialist collections, clearance and recycling company, has now added a Gold Award to the Silver Award it received last year from the National Recycling Stars Scheme. The scheme, run by E2B Pulse, the UK carbon reduction network, rewards an organisation’s commitment to increasing the amount of waste it recycles and to improving the environmental awareness of its staff.

The National Recycling Stars scheme recognises organisations that are making efforts to divert waste from landfill. Organisations are judged on their recycling achievements according to four key criteria:

• Percentage of Waste Recycled and/or Recovered – the amount of waste that is recycled and/or recovered. There is a minimum percentage that must be achieved to qualify for each star rating.
• Number of Recycling Initiatives – This criteria is in place to prevent Recycling Star winners from ‘standing still’.  If a business or organisation is awarded a Gold award (three stars) in one particular year, but undertakes no initiatives the next, the scheme reserves the right to reduce the number of stars awarded (or remove them all).
• Employee Awareness – An organisation must demonstrate that it has undertaken initiatives to inform staff of the recycling options available to them.  There should be an understanding of why it is important to recycle and, for those achieving three stars, there should be a recycling / environmentally friendly culture that is employee-led.
• Other Environmental Initiatives – While responsible waste management is important and can play a large part in reducing an organisation’s impact on the environment, the scheme recognises that there are other actions that organisations can and should take.  Star winners should provide evidence of other initiatives that have been undertaken to reduce their environmental impact.

Waste King’s managing director, Glenn Currie, commented: “Moving from Silver to Gold Award status this year is the result of the company encouraging the use of a waste separation system in preference to mixed skips. Waste King’s key mission is to train and invest in employees and make an impact on the environmental culture within the workplace. In line with this, rewards are offered to staff as an incentive to maximise recycling.”

The Recycling Stars Awards – comprising Gold, Silver, Bronze and Green awards – are awarded depending on an organisation’s degree of ‘recycling excellence’ and every award is reviewed annually. Award holders receive a certificate, a monthly newsletter, entry onto the Recycling Stars website and invitations to free-to-attend events that enable like-minded organisations to work together.

Waste King now guarantees to recycle at least 90 per cent of all the waste it collects. This figure has risen steadily from its claim of recycling ‘at least 75 per cent’ of the waste it collected at the beginning of 2011, as Waste King has gradually refined its operating procedures and developed its staff’s awareness of increasingly environmentally friendly ways of working.

Comment: Environment-orientated awards schemes, such as the Recycling Stars scheme, are an excellent way of increasing awareness – among both staff and clients – of the benefits of recycling and of reducing an organisation’s environmental impact. Quite apart from actually helping the environment, they can encourage and help to foster an ‘environmental ethos’ within the company – and, at a time when there’s not too much good news around in commercial terms, winning an award can do wonders for motivation, job satisfaction and overall ‘pride in your place of work’ levels. There should be more of them.