According to a study, half of SMEs do not know the tonnage or the cost of managing their waste. Nine out of ten companies do not know the total price of their waste. In this context, it isn’t easy to implement solutions to reduce these management costs. Besides, there are many providers for waste collection and management, and invoices can sometimes multiply. To know the cost of waste, conducting a recycling expense audit is a great idea.
What Do You Pay For Your Waste?
- External management of your waste: That is to say, all the stages from collection to recycling, even storage for non-recoverable hazardous industrial waste.
- Production costs: the energy and labor used to sort and recycle your waste and the purchase of materials and consumables used during production.
- Internal management costs: waste handling and storage within the company.
The main cost of waste is before the trash; it is the cost of waste production. Indeed it involves the purchase of materials and consumables used in the production process. But it is also all the waste thrown in the trash, energy, and labor used. Of the total cost of production, 20% to 40% is represented by waste.
Improve Profitability
To limit these costs, it is necessary to maximize the resources instead. This first criterion enables you to both decrease costs and reduces environmental damage. Companies have saved thousands of dollars a year by lowering damages and recycling waste and conducting a recycling expense audit.
Start with small, simple, but effective actions.
To reduce waste and adopt a sustainable ethic, start by putting in place easy-to-follow and straightforward rules.
- Buy reusable materials and eco-friendly equipment,
- Print documents that are only essential and on both sides,
- Reuse the sheets as a draft,
- Sort of waste: paper, cardboard, glass,
These small actions make it possible to raise awareness among all of the company’s employees. Remember that people can be a source of great ideas. Maybe some are recycling experts.
Perform the Audit of Your Waste
Many companies can help you in this case, i.e., by auditing waste management. The company performs the audit of your waste to understand your activity and your recycling needs. What is your waste? What is the amount of waste produced by the company? What type of waste do you have? And so on so forth.
3 Stages of Audit
1. First step: analysis of the current situation. That is to say, the origin of the waste, its nature, the quantity, and its treatment channels
2. Second step: identification of alternative solutions. This stage includes waste recovery, recycling, and waste reduction at the source.
3. Third step: determining and implementing the best waste management methods, economically and environmentally.
The Benefit of Recycling Expense Audit
Within a business organization, the reduction of business costs is an objective which, if achieved, can improve efficiency, that is, to optimize the use of the means necessary for the productive purpose of the business itself.
Therefore, the objective is not to save per se but to improve the general organization by affecting those variable cost items that can significantly impact a company’s financial statements. Therefore, the auditing process is the first step to achieving a significant reduction in costs that a company has set to improve organizational efficiency.
Verify By The Auditors The Following Aspects:
- Water and fuel consumption
- Volumes of solid waste generated
- Gaseous emissions treatment and purification problems
- The efficiency of existing treatment capacities
- Results of the liquid waste monitoring processes
- Recycling and recirculation management
- Economical use of residuals
What Should The Auditor Keep In Mind?
The auditor needs to have complete knowledge of the generation and treatment of waste. It is advisable to take a tour of the various production workshops and auxiliary workshops.
The analysis of the previous exploration elements will serve as the basis for the definition of the general and specific objectives.
The auditor should confirm the existence of the following:
- Production process flow diagram
- Current environmental legislation
Pro Tip: Examine and verify each of the aspects to be audited such as water, air, hazardous and non-hazardous waste, soil, and subsoil; the sources of water supply, wastewater discharges, industrial processes, and services will be limited in one plane,
The Bottomline
It is complicated and challenging to validate the accuracy of these expenditures. And handling this type of cost is a full-time task that takes decades of expertise in the industry to do it correctly. You can get it checked by business experts if you value the money you pay in this expenditure category.
