Office and Commercial Rubbish Removal: What Businesses Should Know

What happens when office waste slowly starts piling up all over the country’s business scene? It starts off as a gradual build up rather than some sudden disaster. However, before you know it, it’s already starting to cost businesses in Australia and cause all sorts of headaches with compliance & regulations. Eventually, you start to notice it most when the numbers get crunched & the reports start rolling in, & can’t be ignored. Office and commercial rubbish removal are no longer something you can just leave in the background. Instead, it’s now right up front and centre in business planning, especially now that regulations are getting stricter & the cost of getting rid of waste is going up.

The Scale of Commercial Waste in Australia

Across the country, commercial activity is still dominating the national waste stream in a way that hasn’t changed that much even with all the ongoing campaigns to get people to be more sustainable. Office environments are a prime example of this. State environmental agencies have been doing waste composition studies, and what’s really striking is that paper and cardboard still make up 40 60% of the waste we see in offices, while plastics are probably contributing around 10 20% even with all the digitisation going on. Meanwhile, these proportions have stayed pretty stable over the last decade. Therefore, this suggests that deeper factors are at play. It’s not just a case of people changing their habits, it’s a deeper structural issue.

Office Strip Outs and Waste Challenges When You Fit Out a New Space

But the situation gets a lot more acute when businesses are relocating or refurbishing. In fact, we see a real spike in waste generation in a very short space of time. In big projects in cities like office strip out Melbourne for example, the waste stream can include all sorts of materials like plasterboard, metals, flooring materials and all sorts of other stuff.

The industry benchmarks from demolition and waste contractors show that strip out phases can generate between 30 and 100 kilograms of waste per square metre, depending on how old the building is and how much work’s been done on it. Furthermore, then there’s the problem of what happens to all this waste afterwards. Data from commercial construction waste audits shows that up to 80% of all these materials are actually technically recoverable. However, the reality is that we’re not actually managing to recover much more than 60% due to contamination and poor waste segregation practices.

In cities like Melbourne and Sydney, the financial pressure is really starting to tell. The cost of getting rid of commercial waste in the landfill is going up, and the cost of labour for doing it is also going up. As a result, that’s all putting a big strain on businesses to start planning better for waste disposal. However, the thing is, adoption is really patchy. Smaller refurbishments are often just getting on with it without doing any proper waste audits. Because of this, we’re not getting the most out of the materials we are recovering.

Cost Structures and Pricing Drivers

As waste chucks keep piling up, it’s getting harder to ignore the impact of regulations and logistics on how we charge businesses for rubbish removal. In some states, like New South Wales and Victoria, you’re looking at landfills that are just ridiculously expensive, we’re talking up to AUD 170 a tonne for your average office waste. Additionally, these landfill fees are a big part of how much it costs to get rid of your rubbish. Politicians and business owners alike are getting pretty worked up about how these fees are going to shape their decisions on how to handle waste.

And it’s not just about getting to the bin and chucking it in. Transport and man power costs can be just as high, we’re talking 30 45% of the price tag for service in a big city. On top of that, it’s a whole different ball game when you’re dealing with a mix of recyclables and other stuff that can’t be easily sorted. Consequently, that can add up to a 50% price hike right there. Industry numbers show that when businesses take the time to sort their waste at the source, the cost comes down by 15 35%, mainly because they’re getting a better return on recycling and wasting less in the landfill.

Environmental Regulation & Compliance Standards

The way it looks now, regulation has become the new normal in waste management. The National Waste Policy Action Plan sets a pretty ambitious target for getting 80% of our waste back as something useful by 2030. Yet, were currently only hitting 60 65%. Therefore, that’s a pretty big gap between what we’re aiming for and what were actually doing.