Fairview Facilities Management (FFM) delivers facilities management solutions to industrial, food manufacturing and clinical sectors, across the UK and Ireland. Utilising its bespoke Smart Tech Platform, FFM can guarantee annual savings following a due diligence process of review of their current services.

Looking specifically at the important aspect of waste management for facilities managers, we talk to FFM Managing Director Ben McCauley.

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During the due diligence process of working with each new client, we seek to unlock and deliver financial savings, and almost always discover that their recycling processes are inadequate and that they are missing out on the opportunity to recover significant rebates.

Unlocking the value of waste

We help our clients to reverse their behaviour and spending. Before we become involved, they are paying companies to take waste away from their premises and facilities. Now, our on-site staff separate waste, so that it can be collected by the correct recyclers. As a result, our clients make money from their waste – sufficient to more than cover the cost of the process. Each month, for each waste stream according to tonnage, we receive a rebate from the recycler, which we pass on to our client.

In manufacturing facilities, we examine specific recycling opportunities for particular waste streams and ensure that separation and collection are optimized.

Improving sustainability is the ultimate aim, but adopting processes and procedures to ensure correct separation and collection has allowed our clients to understand and embrace the fact that waste has value.

Rebates can be achieved across all types of waste, from cardboard, through most plastics, to aluminium and steel, realizing a previously untapped, viable revenue stream.

We always look at the bigger picture and at every aspect of a business, doing all we can to help our clients improve their sustainability credentials and reduce their carbon footprint. It is important to reduce or remove plastics on-site, so as an example, where we provide vending or catering services, we’ve swapped out the cups to recyclable ones from VegWare.

Education is key to efficient waste management

In every business, education is key to efficient waste management. For many of our manufacturing clients, the separation of materials for recycling in the factory is quite obvious, but when you get down to behaviour in common and rest areas, we still witness the tendency for people to see a bin and just throw waste into it, without considering what needs to happen next.

We support our clients by providing the correct range of bins, appropriate signage and education. Our staff actively engage with our client’s employees to encourage best practice, and we put up posters which emphasize the importance of correctly separating waste and explain that by so doing, it has a value, bringing income, rather than incurring cost. In this way we can help to influence a change in the culture throughout a business, so that everyone plays their part in ensuring that waste is properly recycled and achieves its full value.

Utilising Smart FM

We have noticed that for most businesses, shareholders are asking for sustainability and environmental issues to move to the top of the agenda. Our role is to actively help our clients to deliver on that important goal and to provide measurable improvements and results.

Many sites have managers dedicated specifically to waste management and the efficient recycling of waste, so working closely with them as a facilities management company and providing the correct reporting at the right time is crucial.

FFM’s Smart Tech Platform drives productivity and enables integration of data and business systems into scalable specific solutions – with smart workflows and automation driving integrated business services. The fully integrated Mobile Solution provides our staff with instant real-time access to important information to help them complete tasks, while our specially designed portal gives customers 24/7 access to their business profile. Our technology stack solution suite brings all this together in a single portal, enabling optimal service delivery through smart workflow and task automation.

The platform enables real-time live reporting about the types and amounts of recycling, allowing us to discover what we can do better, and we go through the data once a month with our stakeholders to identify areas for improvement, ranging from staff education to space allocation. We also focus on the financial impact to ensure our clients benefit from the value of their waste.