It’s that time of year—every day the break room counter gets more crowded with cookies and pies and candy cane wrappers are found strewn around the office. It’s a joyous season of thanksgiving, celebration and… well, trash. Lots of it. From luncheons to leftovers, pecan pie to plastic poinsettia pots, every facility across the nation is seeing an increase in waist size and waste size.
We hope if you’re reading this, it’s because a) because you are already a BLUECOOPER client and such a fan, you just stopped by to read our blog J or b) you are shopping around because you aren’t happy with your current service (most people decide to make a change at the start of a new year) and you’re considering BLUECOOPER (thank you!).
Either way, we wanted to provide you with a few professional tips to prepare for the flood of trash that is inevitable if you have more than 10 employees.
First, if you provide your own trash can liners, make sure you are purchasing the right size for the bins around the office, and thickness for the load. All-paper trash requires a different “mil” than trash that will have pointy and/or hard items tossed inside. And breakroom trash cans always require the best quality, as nothing is worse than 2 day old pumpkin pie squirting out the bottom and leaking onto the carpet! Next, if you know you’re going to have a catered event during the day, you should reach out to your cleaning company and let them know—if they’re like us, they’ll either provide extra hours to the crew or possibly even send an extra hand. The extra hours are always appreciated by staff this time of year, and we believe that that just because your office is in the holiday spirit, doesn’t mean your cleaning should slack. On the same note, if you are having an after-hours event or late afternoon staff party and know people will linger in the office later than usual, alert your cleaning company of this, as well. It does no good to come start a normal clean at 5pm (and trash is usually dealt with first on a cleaning shift) if trash cans are still getting tossed into at 8pm. Letting your crew know about that late office crowd ensures they arrive later and can actually make a dent in the job at hand!
Another good idea this time of year is to rally up some volunteers around the office to help with recycling. Cheaper than paying for separate office recycling service is simply having a handful of people that volunteer to take the recycle bin home once a week and simply toss out with their own residential recycling. Doing this will not only lighten your trash load (and make it safer without the presence of glass), it will definitely get you on Santa’s nice list!
Help us help you—trash is always a big concern this time of year, and it should be… nothing is worse than a break room that should smell of cinnamon and sprinkles instead reeking of day-old casserole and rotten deviled eggs!
Unless you have a Grinch in the office that actually eats from the trash, help your BLUECOOPER elves get the job done right by alerting them, when possible, of high volume trash days… and everyone will be singing carols as they work!