Quite simply, buying recycled products is one of the easiest and quickest way to reduce your organisation’s environmental footprint.
Products manufactured from recovered or ‘recycled’ products help conserve resources and reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill. They also often require less water and energy – and therefore produce fewer greenhouse gases – than products manufactured from ‘virgin’ materials.
For example when making paper products:
- Less energy is used, because less processing is required. Recycling just 1 tonne of paper fibre can save around 18 gigajoules of energy!
- Large amounts of water are required to pulp the fibre from new trees to manufacture paper. Recycling just 1 tonne of paper fibre into cardboard can save up to 24,000 litres of water!
Importantly, buying recycled content products (RCPs) is an easy, tangible first step any business – or any person – can take towards a more sustainable world. At a time when companies are increasingly looking to reduce their environmental footprint and offset the impacts that can’t be reduced, the simple step of buying recycled products is a really positive contribution.
Australians are great at recycling, but the truth is: you aren’t really recycling until you’re buying recycled. Until the material we’ve recycled has been reprocessed into new and useful products or materials and then sold again, we haven’t closed the loop, and that represents a great challenge for our future. Without closing the loop, we haven’t yet met the environmental, social and economic benefits of recycling.
When you choose an RCP over a new product, you’re creating an incentive for manufacturers and suppliers to supply these products, and you’re closing the loop.
Corporate Express is a committed Major Corporate Member and Sponsor of the Buy Recycled Business Alliance (BRBA) – a national non-profit association of businesses that are committed to promoting, purchasing and using RCPs and materials.
The BRBA makes buying and selling RCPs easier, by leveraging networks and experience to help its member companies:
- Establish a Company Commitment – develop a clear company policy to purchase RCPs as suitable for your business.
- Engage Your Suppliers – communicate your commitment and gain supplier support.
- Develop a Lower Impact Purchasing Strategy – develop a plan to start transitioning to RCPs.
- Find Suitable Products – research the availability of RCPs appropriate for your business.
- Monitor Your Achievements – review and understand the broader environmental benefits your company is achieving through the purchase of RCPs.
The BRBA is now making buying recycled even easier for everyone via the development of Australia’s first National Database of Recycled Products, to be launched in April and May 2008. The database will be a one-stop-shop for detailed product information on the range of recycled products available across Australia.
Product information is being collated in a level of detail never previously provided in a recycled product database. The information will be especially useful for procurement managers and reporting teams within businesses, particularly those that are National Packaging Covenant signatories or undertaking environmental reporting.
The database will be freely available to anyone via the BRBA website (
www.brba.com.au) and will be promoted to business and governments, NGOs and householders.
Contact the Buy Recycled Business Alliance for further information on how your company can support this move toward a better future (email
brba@brba.com.au).
