What is Commercial Waste?

Any rubbish a business generates is an example of commercial waste. It could be a crisp packet thrown away by a customer in a café or old wooden pallets used to deliver goods to a shop. Some commercial waste types are more common than others and need regular removal and disposal.

These are some common examples of commercial waste that many organisations produce:

• General waste – food scraps, non-recyclable packaging, and any other non-hazardous rubbish that can’t be recycled, recovered, or reused.
• Dry mixed recycling – paper, cardboard, metal drink cans and plastic bottles where there’s not enough volume to justify individual bins for each waste type.
• Food waste – leftover food from customers (plate waste) and expired ingredients or inedible food from the kitchen of a café, restaurant, hotel, or pub.
• Glass recycling – empty bottles of wine and beer in pubs, broken glassware in a restaurant, used glass jars containing ingredients from a commercial kitchen.
• Garden waste – grass cuttings, hedge trimmings, dead flowers, and any other green waste from a commercial garden (such as a hotel, museum, or pub beer garden).
• Construction waste – bricks, rubble, concrete, wood, and other waste materials from construction and demolition sites.

Any organisation in England or Wales that produces, carries, keeps, disposes of, treats, imports or controls waste has a duty of care for it under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. For businesses, this essentially means you must store rubbish safely and arrange the removal of commercial waste by licensed waste carriers.

The local council won’t collect waste from businesses, unlike domestic waste. And you can’t take it to your nearest household waste recycling centre (HWRC). Only licensed waste carriers can legally transport commercial waste anyway. Unless your organisation employs any then you must use a third-party company to remove your waste responsibly.

When producing and managing commercial waste you also have a responsibility to follow the waste hierarchy. This involves taking steps to prevent, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, and responsibly dispose of waste in that order. Auditing your commercial waste production and putting in place a plan to reduce and recycle where possible is vital.

Disposing of business waste must be done in a safe, legal, and responsible way to protect the environment and human health. Your organisation should conduct a waste audit and create a management plan. This should include the types and volumes of waste you produce, how it will be stored, and who is responsible for removing and disposing of it.

Use a range of bins to separate and store your commercial waste on-site. Wheelie bins, bags, and containers such as static front end loaders can all store various types and amounts of waste. Then arrange removal regularly by licensed waste carriers, such as Divert.