Brits failing to recycle enough at work
December 18, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Although we may well be responsible citizens when it comes to recycling at home, this good habit stops as soon as we get to work. This was the finding from a government commissioned survey carried out by Tickbox.net/Opinion Matters on behalf of the Centre for Information.
The survey found that we seem to have very different attitudes to recycling at home compared to at work, and it came up with many statistics to back this up.
Some of the most revealing findings were that:
- over 40% of us recycle plastic at home and not at work
- 33% of us don’t turn off electrical goods at the end of the day at work although we do at home
- 21% of us throw away items at work that could be recycled
- 21% of us print out emails unnecessarily
This is pretty shocking and begs the question as to why we can’t be bothered to recycle when at work. Perhaps it is the feeling that recycling is not our problem when we are in the office, or maybe we don’t have the financial incentive to be eco-minded at work because we are not saving our own money.
The results come after Defra recently launched a campaign urging small businesses to cut down on their waste and reduce their energy and water use, showing that saving energy can save money too.
Defra claims that businesses could save £6.4 billion through being more resource efficient and installing low-cost measures, and that doing so will also improve their image in the eyes of customers.
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