Duty of care
What is waste prevention?
Waste prevention is not producing waste in the first place. It is the top tier of the waste hierarchy, and the only one that removes the cost and the impact of a material entirely.
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<img src="https://wasteoptix.co.uk/glossary/prevention/diagram.svg" alt="waste prevention — diagram from WasteOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://wasteoptix.co.uk/glossary/prevention">What is waste prevention?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://wasteoptix.co.uk">WasteOptix</a>
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</figure>It happens before anything a waste business touches — in purchasing, in specification, in how a process is designed. For a collector, the value is in being able to tell a customer where their waste is actually coming from.
It is measured by absence, which is why it is the hardest tier to evidence and the easiest to leave out of a report. A tonne not produced does not appear on a weighbridge ticket.
Reducing packaging, reusing containers, ordering to requirement and extending the life of equipment are the ordinary forms of it. None of them are waste management decisions, which is why the hierarchy reaches beyond the waste industry.
What goes wrong in practice
- Reported on only by proxy, with no baseline to compare against.
- Treated as somebody else's job because it happens before the bin.
- Prevention measures introduced with no record, so the saving cannot be shown.