green efforts to consumers or regulatory officials. The cornerstone of tracking and publica-tion tools is their ability to offer web-based recycling reports. These reports track every type of univer-sal waste that each individual facility recy-cles and displays the totals in sortable cat-egories like year, month and waste type. Recycling reports can be viewed for indi-vidual facilities or for the company as a whole. The reports are detailed, but are also easy to access and understand, guarantee-ing that any employee can quickly get a good picture of his or her facility’s recycling progress. These reports are perfect for providing the data that affords a solid foundation to green marketing campaigns. Another tool used by facilities to recycle all types of bulbs, batteries, ballasts or electronic waste is mail-in recycling con-tainers. Facilities fill up the containers with waste and then ship them off to a recycling center. At any given time, employees using this tool can see the status of containers within their corporate program. This means that a company can see which of its facilities are actually ordering, filling and returning their containers and which facilities have neglected to start recy-cling with them. For a corporate recycling program to be a success, high participation rates are imper-ative, and container tracking is one more tool to make sure that each facility is doing its part. Another simple yet valuable tool is official certificates of recycling. These certificates are issued to facilities after they recycle their waste with a bulk pickup. They provide official recognition of the amount and type of waste recycled and are perfect for proving to regulatory officials that a facility is disposing of their waste properly. Once issued, the certificates are avail-able 24/7 online and are easily printed or e-mailed. Scott knows about the benefits of these certificates: “Our customers in our buildings want to see proof that we are recycling our waste properly. All we have to do is lookup the recycling certificate online and print it out to show them how well we’re doing.” Conclusion Any corporate program involving multiple facilities across many different locations is never easy to launch or maintain. However, this article has hopefully con-vinced you that a corporate recycling pro-gram is worth the effort. There are efficient and effective options out there to meet your organization’s unique needs. Getting a well-run and continuous recycling program in place at your compa-ny is a big step towards full environmental sustainability, and your employees, cus-tomers and regulatory officials will thank you for it. CM Circle Product Information no. 206 on page 32 www.cmmonline.com 27
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