Most jewelry store owners might say recycling is not the place to start because they share a dumpster with the entire shopping center. Au contraire, my friend, the first place to start is recycling. Why? Well it’s easy and it actually can save your landlord some bucks. Yes, green bucks.

Depending on where you live, people who recycle find that their hauling fees normally get reduced when they implement recycling and that the extra recycling pick-up fee does not cost as much as the regular trash pick-up fees. Besides, did you know that up to 90% of what is thrown away is recyclable in the average office setting? It’s so important that Wal-Mart recycles at all their stores and makes money from their cardboard box recycling. A lot of large chain grocery stores do too. Your landlord is missing a revenue opportunity if he’s not at least recycling cardboard for his tenants.

But why not recycle everything? Office paper, plastic, glass and metals are all a commodity nowadays and it just makes cents, yes cents to implement it. If your landlord is reticent, then have some other retailers join the conversation. In this economy, we all need to save where we can.

Recycling policies in your store are super easy to adopt. Just an extra bin for single stream recycling (which is what the average recycling service offers) makes it simple for people to toss recyclables into the bin. Single stream recycling is where plastic, aluminum and tin cans all go in the same bin. It gets sorted at the recycling location. I have stood in one of these operations watching the recycling getting loaded into sorting machines and it is truly astonishing how much stuff we produce and throw away.

You will need to remind your staff to wash out their food stuff from containers to prevent unwanted problems, but once it’s in place - it’s a snap. Even though it’s called single stream, normally paper is collected in another container.

Another advantage of recycling is morale. Your staff will smile a little each day as they participate. It sounds so simple but everyone wants to do their part and knowing that their employers care about the environment and is doing something about it, gives the staff a little “warm hug” every time they do it. No, really it does!