The past six months has been difficult for businesses all over the UK, with very few sectors emerging unscathed. From retail and leisure to casinos and airlines, businesses which rely on face-to-face human interactions to keep the needle moving have suffered greatly. While the waste management industry might not have been hit quite as hard as some of those industries listed above, a second spike of cases and failing client confidence has certainly made things much more difficult.
With that said, Brown Recycling, a waste management company based in Stoke-on-Trent, have been weathering the storm fantastically, all thanks to a solid mixture of quick thinking, clear communication and sensible strategy.
Here’s what Mitch Brown, sales director at Brown Recycling, had to say on the matter: “The key thing for us, really, was the speed at which we adapted. I think, in a situation like the one we were faced with, something completely new and unprecedented, it can be easy to just ignore it or hold off. We didn’t want to do that though, we wanted our customers to know that we were putting their safety first and that we were able to offer guidance where necessary.”
While quick adaptation is always beneficial in the business world when it comes to averting a crisis, it’s never too late to start putting measures in place to boost customer confidence. Below, Dominique Brown, compliance director at Brown Recycling, details some of the COVID-proof processes that the company put in place to ensure that the business can keep running as usual.
“For skip and trade waste collections, the first thing we wanted to do was make sure that they were all contactless. This means card payments only and no signatures being requested by the driver. This puts both parties at ease. When it comes to active hygiene measures, to ensure that both your employees and your customers are safe, collaboration is key. With businesses struggling to hold on to clients during the pandemic, asking a lot of your customers can feel like a step in the wrong direction, but honesty and clear guidance is the way to ensure partnerships hold during this time.”
Here are some of the things that we ask of our customers to keep the waste we collect free from contamination:
- Bin handles must be sanitised with anti-bacterial wipes after they’ve been emptied.
- All waste is double-bagged for added peace of mind.
- Any COVID-19 contaminated waste must be quarantined on the customer’s site for 72 hours prior to collection, following government guidelines that the virus cannot survive on a surface for this length of time.
- We also make sure that any suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 on site are reported immediately. This gives us time to act accordingly.
- On top of what we ask of our customers, of course, we also make sure that everything is under control on our site. Social distancing is enforced throughout the business, and increased cleaning and hygiene measures have been put in place to stop the virus”.
So, if we’ve learnt anything about how businesses – particularly businesses in service-based sectors like Brown Recycling – can weather the storm during this pandemic, it’s that communication is absolutely vital. Even if it’s not good news, it’s always best to keep customers informed, because being in the dark can lead to panic, and panic can lead to rash decisions.
Brown Recycling is a leading waste management company based in Stoke-on-Trent with extensive experience in the industry. They offer a wide range of services, from scrap metal recycling to trade waste collection, and utilise a wide variety of different recycling technologies to ensure that as much waste as possible is diverted from landfill. Learn more about their mission by visiting their website.
