Warehouses are some of the most carbon-dioxide-emitting facilities in the world. They are busy places where goods and people come in and out. Delivery trucks move items from one location to another. People are walking endlessly from one end to another, doing inventories and calculating sales. A typical warehouse of today will also include packing and assembly operations. This creates an even more complex work environment that causes carbon footprints.
Such activities have a profound impact on the environment. This is why warehouses must identify recycling methods that will help reduce their carbon footprints. Using an HSM ProfiPack 425 machine for their packaging operations can help recycle cardboard and other paper materials. This will help maximize your resources, reduce costly packaging materials, and help minimize the impact of your business operations on the environment.
Reduce
Look at your warehouse operations. You will surely identify a lot of areas where you can reduce energy consumption. For example, you can install motion-detecting lights in the warehouse. These will only turn on when someone is in that particular area. This reduces the need for your warehouse employees to turn the lights on and off. Employees forget about this task when the operation is in full swing.
In terms of shipping, you can use technology to reduce the weight of the shipments and save energy from moving these items around the warehouse. You can also invest in biodegradable containers and packaging materials to make it easy for the recipient to dispose of or recycle the packaging.
Reuse
Wood pallets and plastic totes can be used again in the warehouse. You can incentivize customers who will return the packaging containers to your store or warehouse so that you can reuse them for the next items to be delivered. This will also reduce the cost of the products seeing, as packaging is an extra expense the customers don’t need to pay for.
You can also reuse the containers and packaging that your suppliers use to deliver the raw materials to you. If you go this route, make sure that your customers know that you are reusing these packaging for environmental purposes. Let them know that the difference will be deducted from the price of the product.
Recycle
If you cannot recycle materials in the warehouse because of time and space constraints, you can send them to a recycling facility. In the recycling plant, these materials will be converted into usable items. This is an environmentally correct decision to make as a business owner. Identify recycling centers that can receive the materials you have in the warehouse. Most recycling centers will even offer to pick up the materials from your warehouse, saving you the cost of having to deliver them.
Aside from corporate policies that you can put in place, it is also important that your employees know what needs to be done to reduce the impact of their work on the environment. Changing their work habits will significantly reduce carbon footprints. The simple act of remembering to turn off the lights, for example, can lead to a huge reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.