What are your biggest problems? Are you having trouble finding and keeping great people? Excessive downtime? Too many workplace injuries? There is a solution for every problem. These 10 industry problems can only be addressed by a strategic partner who has strong waste/recycling expertise.
1. Poorly Trained/Managed Employees
This is a very common problem. This is a common problem in recycling businesses. Many of these workers have never been properly trained and aren’t even familiar with the job. A reliable labor team supplier must always clearly communicate job expectations to workers and then manage them. Employees will be content if they get what they want. They’ll do a great job and stay in their jobs.
2. Employee Retention
You’re familiar with the feeling: you come to work every day wondering how many people won’t show up, and how this will affect your productivity. It feels like you are always playing “catch up.” You need to get back to the top, which is to train and manage employees correctly from day 1. You can also help them by encouraging from the inside.
3. Excessive Downtime
This can really affect productivity and employee morale. Each employee should take responsibility for their own time. Employees should be available to work when the machine turns on. They shouldn’t just punch their timecard. You can regain hours of productivity by making simple procedural changes like reducing long phone calls, taking shorter lunch breaks, and avoiding unexplained absences.
4. Overcoming Language/Cultural Issues
Multilingual societies are a reality in today’s world. Smart workforce suppliers actively recruit people from all over the globe. They might need to hire operations managers who speak the language of their target country. This extra effort pays off in the end with hardworking employees.
5. Retraining Employees – Areas With Low Employment
It’s difficult to fill all available positions when the national unemployment rate is at 5% today. Many times, labor team leaders do most of the hiring on the actual jobsite and not in a shopfront. Prospects can see the setup and decide if it is right for them. Another smart solution is to recruit backup pools to fill open positions as soon as they are available.
6. Lack of Industry Expertise
You can’t beat hands-on experience in the waste/recycling sector. It all starts with the equipment. Operation managers must be familiar with the machinery and how it works. Sometimes, a quick fix can be all that is needed. People skills are equally important. Strong operations managers must have respect for their workforce and be able to deal with employees with work-related and personal challenges.
7. Poor Processes or Nonexistent Processes
Another major industry problem is this. Your operation will be unable to maintain consistency if it lacks processes. Workforce providers who offer process-driven expertise will streamline the on-boarding, training and measurement of each employee. This allows you to focus on the important issues that will lead to your success.
8. Placement for Proper Employees
Although it sounds easy, having the right employees on the right line can make all the difference in productivity. Experienced managers will pay attention to the speed of the conveyor belt, the quality of the recyclables and the availability of people. Operations managers who have extensive experience in the waste and recycling industry will be able to optimize employee performance.
9. Recyclables With Overcoming Poor Quality
Geographic location is a major factor in the quality of recycled materials. Seattle, for example, is very eco-conscious and their recycled materials are generally of high quality. There can be a wide range of quality in other parts of the country. You’ll now see almost everything moving down the line. Even the kitchen sink. These items, especially garden hoses, can get wrapped around equipment and cause serious damage. Even if the quality of your recyclables is poor, having knowledgeable and trained personnel will allow you to maintain productivity.
10. Promoting Safety Performance
The waste/recycling sector faces many safety issues. These include chemical exposure, combustible powder explosions, machine guarding hazards and exposure to dangerous equipment with moving parts. Industry leaders offer a proactive safety approach that begins with a thorough safety compliance audit at each plant and continues to comprehensive safety training for all employees in order to raise safety levels.
Challenges of Plastic Waste Recycling
It feels good to recycle. Recycling gives us the power to change our habits and make a difference for our planet. Even calling out people for not recycling is possible (shame!). We can also encourage our green behavior by mentioning it. However, this feeling of good might be just a placebo effect.
Recycling is better than throwing things in the trash. However, tons of recyclables end up in landfills and oceans (literally tons), causing havoc in ecosystems. Recent research shows that only 9 per cent of all plastics in the world is actually recycled.
Recycling is, in other words, another name for the long and expensive journey that plastic bottles take to get to a landfill. There, it slowly degrades over hundreds of years. If we are lucky, the plastic won’t end up being eaten by any bird, fish, or other mammal.
Plastic waste recycling
Plastic waste recycling is a process of transforming plastic waste into useful and new products. Plastic recycling is a highly efficient process as stated also by dumpster locator.
- Protect the environment
- Reduce dependence on landfills
- Reduce plastic pollution to save resources
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It is well known that plastic recycling is an important part and can give various advantages especially protecting our environment. But do you know the challenges faced during the process of plastic recycling?
Have a look at the below listed challenges that the industry faces during recycling
- Limited Availability of Quality Material:
There are 7 different kinds of plastic available in a typical waste stream and each type has a varied degradation behavior. Due to the lack of such information, producers combine all the compounds together in the manufacturing process. As a result, the recycling process becomes difficult leading to incineration which is a major waste of valuable resources.
- Gap in Demand & Supply:
Lack of awareness creates barriers to plastic waste collection. The waste pickers struggle in collecting the plastic waste & often ignore collecting certain plastic wastes due to low payment value.
- Lack of waste segregation at source:
Sorting wastes by hand is the oldest and simplest method of segregating plastic. In developing countries like India, it requires manual segregation for each type of plastic before recycling takes place. This leads to an inefficient and inconsistent in sorting process.
- Lack of Proper Technology
Recycling has come up a long way in various countries. But still, multiple countries (especially developing countries) lag behind in terms of technology. The lower sources of technology ultimately affect the level of the recycling process.
- Lack of Proper Industrial Expertise
Improper industrial experience in plastic waste recycling leads to various challenges faced by the workers. The new equipment & unclear expertise turns the working into a complicated system. This indeed results in one of the biggest hurdles in plastic recycling management.
Effective Plastic Waste Recycling
- Educating manufacturers on the different types of plastics and thousands of options for polymers & their chemical properties. The number of plastic manufacturing methods that have been created to meet the needs of plastic.
- The creation of awareness and a job opportunity for waste pickers.
- A manager who has extensive experience in the plastic recycling industry can make a significant impact. Employees can improve their skills by learning how to operate new machinery equipment and its operation.
- A variety of activities are conducted to inform the unorganized sector about the concept of employment. Offering better living conditions and hiring the right people to fill the roles required in the plastic recycling process.
- The best way to overcome the lack of industrial experience is to find a skilled person who can improve the skills of workers. Operational management can help improve the results of plastic waste recycling by explaining how new equipment works.
