How wasteful is your workplace?

[DaisyChains6]

Reading another thread about the things people do to be thrifty and less wasteful, it got me thinking about work and the wasteful things they can do.

Every day people are sent on unnecessary trips to our various units for things which could be a phone call or something could be picked up as a job lot rather than lots of individual little trips. Doing so wastes company money on paying for mileage and the lost hours of staff which could be used more productively.

What sort of wasteful things do your work do?

Things like buying new of something and getting rid of it months later for the latest thing, even though the old one is fine etc..

Spending money on projects that never transpire, spending money on staff travelling about for pointless meetings, spending money on staff team bonding days... It's endless.

Yes to pointless meetings...

So much paper printed unnecessarily. Multiple copies of papers for meetings "just in case" when 90% of attendees will use their tablet/iPad/VC screen. Emails and reports printer because people "don't like" reading on their monitor. I used to work in an almost paperless office so this has been a real bugbear for me at my new employer.

Lots of business travel despite everyone having conference call and webcam facilities

Meetings for the sake of meetings

The only positive is that there are no plastic cups available in the whole building.

My last employer didn't recycle anything. Not even glass.

It rented an office in a block and they only provided a general waste service and the boss said it was too expensive to pay for a recycling service on top. I find it astonishing that it is even allowed these days. It was embarrassing when people came in for meetings and there was paper and cans in the bins, which could so easily be recycled.

We print copies of EVERYTHING. I’m an estate agent and to comply with regulations we need 7 years of paper and electronic copies of communications, emails, documents, etc for every property we are involved with incase we are audited by HMRC. I swear we have an actual forest worth of a4 paper in our archive.

Despite this being the 21st century 90% of our offers are submitted by fax. The offer itself is often just a single page but far too many solicitors also fax a copy of the sale particulars, as if I can’t figure out what house they are talking about from the address noted in the bloody offer. The amount of toner it takes to print a copy of a document I already have is unreal and our fax machine is so old i can’t stop a transmission once it starts.

We have nothing in place to recycle toner cartridges etc and even if we did no where to store them for uplift.

I dread to think what our carbon footprint is 😞

I work in an NHS clinic.
Some people send paper copies of letters to each other within the Trust! Waste of paper, printing, envelope.
We send paper copies of letters to GP’s, hospitals etc, when we could send the, by secure email, but there isn’t an agreement in place.
Our Trust use a different patient record system than the one generally used by the NHS and so can’t access the same info hence having to send copies.

We tried to do recycling but the NHS Trust wouldn’t pay the fee being asked by the Council to collect it, so everything just goes in the general rubbish.

Occasionally I take plastic bottles and cans home and put them in my own recycling bin!

NHS are the biggest money wasters ever!

I agree about the NHS being terrible money wasters. We have meetings for the sake of meetings e.g. our team is based South West wide and we usually meet via Skype which is fab but every 6 weeks they hire a meeting space so we can meet face to face. Loads of extra printing etc.

Government. Pretty good at printing much less than even 5 years ago, furniture gets re-used, not much is provided anyway. Though in the move to cut out paper coffee cups, they had to buy loads of plastic cups for visitors and anyone who's forgotten to bring a mug can buy one - which has resulted in more plastic usage, but also the new caterers have started producing loads of meals in waxed cardboard cartons, even if eating in, 'as it' s part of the concept'...

Not so much my workplace but connected to it, one of our residents wears a new convene everyday. In each convene pack there are a pair of scissors, so that's 7 pairs of scissors a week , 14 a fortnight etc etc. We have been collecting them and giving them to the local schools !! This must cost the nhs so much money and the waste if you arent able to give them away is ridiculous.

Wow, I've heard about the NHS apparently being really wasteful. I bet they are charged a bomb for their resources too from outside rip off merchants-- sources.

We recycle everything, we all separate our own rubbish in to multiple bins including food waste. We don’t print unless we absolutely have to. We have rainwater harvesting tanks and use the car park and roof run off to flush the toilets.

We do pretty well I think.

Mine is terrible.

Despite getting a new computer system system to have electronic files all we do now is save everything on the computer system as well as on paper.

It’s a department in the legal area and everything seems to change very, very slowly. We use literal red tape in our office

Omg so many at my work.

One is I see so many staff grab a polystyrene coffee cup, use it to drink literally one sip of water from, then throw the cup. Repeat 10 x per day.

No recycling bin until last month.

Keep installing random screens no one uses. The desk became so cluttered with computers I had to unplug a few and put them in a cupboard.

Our company gave everyone 2 screens and took away most of the printers. It’s been revolutionary. We’re down 90% printing by volume in a year. Also now have water filter instead of chillers and no disposable cups or crockery. On the downside, recycling is bad but that’s a national issue ( not uk).

Ours isn't too bad on the business side of things. We are largely paperless and don't have too many wasteful "projects".
Recycling is encouraged but a lot of people just ignore the recycle bin and stick paper/plastic in the normal waste bin. I don't think the cleaners have quite got the gist either as they often empty the recycled waste into the normal big waste bins.

I find having the radiators on full blast and the windows open a huge waste, no one seems to consider turning them off or down.
We have got rid of plastic cups at the water venders, but this is because no one could be arsed to order more.

the heating is still on full blast (despite lots of complaints) and last week workmen were in installing air -conditioning!

the recycling bins get emptied into the same skip as the rubbish bins

multiple copies of reports etc printed for meetings, then have to be shredded as confidential waste - which is then tipped into the skip.....

Our office are not at all wasteful. The only wasteful thing is we are in an office that is part of a larger building with different organisations in it. The heating is centrally controlled. So yes we do sometimes sit with the heating on and windows open.