Understand Your Business Waste Streams

Waste-Free Tuesday: ♻️

3R Group did just that!

3R Group Find a Next Life for PPE

Until recently, 3R's resource recovery teams used nearly 70,000 single-use gloves a year as essential PPE. This equated to approximately 460 kg of waste to landfill.

Identifying this waste stream led Product Innovation Engineer Gemma Burnside to seek a solution. After chatting to a supplier of recyclable gloves at the WasteMINZ Conference, Gemma conducted some research to ensure the product and service met the team's needs.

Ultimately, the gloves were rolled out across all three of 3R's hubs. Now, instead of going in the bin, used gloves are collected and recycled into aggregate for concrete products like pavers, and the glove bill has dropped by around 50%.

This case study teaches us that sustainability isn’t always hard, complicated, or costly. Sometimes it simply involves identifying a waste stream and finding an alternative option.

Take a closer look at what your business sends to landfill. Challenge your team to pause before using the landfill bin and consider what could be avoided, replaced, reduced, reused or directed to an appropriate recycling or organics collection.

Understanding your waste streams—from food scraps and packaging to production offcuts and office materials—helps identify where waste occurs and opportunities to improve. Reviewing the volume and types of waste generated can support better purchasing decisions, more efficient processes and clearer disposal practices.

Start with what your organisation purchases, uses and sells. Could you reduce excess stock, prevent food waste, remove unnecessary packaging or introduce reusable options? Are materials entering your landfill bins that could be recovered through locally available services?

Some waste may be unavoidable, but there are still opportunities to reduce it. Use what you learn to set practical actions, involve your team and track progress beyond Waste-Free Tuesday.