There was still "lots of room for improvement" when it comes to how much we recycle at work compared with our habits at home, according to an expert. Figures suggest only 61% of people in Wales recycle often at their workplace, with one in five saying they do not recall seeing the appropriate facilities to do so. Providing more bins or clearer labelling are some of the ways in which businesses could make a difference, said waste reduction charity Wrap.
But one business had already seen a "significant improvement" at their offices after removing staff's personal bins, a move that was initially met with resistance. When recruitment firm Acorn by Synergie first moved into their offices on the outskirts of Newport in 2003, they were producing six large wheelie bins' worth of rubbish a week. It now has just one weekly collection thanks to increased recycling, including food waste, which was their biggest adaptation, following the introduction of the Welsh government's Workplace Recycling Law in 2024.
"The main thing that we changed was removing desk bins and individual bins," said director Mark Rudge. "We had quite a bit of resistance to that. Individuals liked having their own little waster station.
"But we put central recycling areas within each zone of the business, and eventually, people get the hang of that. "A lot of home recycling is extremely similar, so people brought those good habits to the workplace." Office worker Ann-Marie Derrick admitted fellow staff members had found it a pain to begin with, but it had now become "second nature". "Anybody new coming to the office is just straight away onboard and I think we're probably quite proud as a team about how much recycling we do." The company's environmental manager Anthony Lee said it had taken a few months for staff to fully mirror their home recycling habits at the workplace, and that there had been a "significant improvement in compliance".
Not all workers and business have adapted to the same degree. WRAP's annual tracker survey indicated that although 94% of people in Wales say they recycle at home, only 61% do so "very often at work" with that figure dropping to below half for students at college or university. Only 30% of respondents said they had seen lots of recycling facilities at their workplace, despite the new requirements, while 20% said they could not recall seeing any.
"It's still a relatively new thing to have recycling bins when we're away from home," said Angela Spiteri, senior marketing manager at WRAP. "It's a very positive step in the right direction for Wales, but it's not perfect and there's a lot of things we can do to improve." She said there was a responsibility on businesses to ensure that was possible, "providing the right bins and facilities for people to make that easier". "I don't recycle as much when I am out and about, I just bin it," admits Gerwyn Pugh, 56, from Barry.
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