Being aware of what you throw away can help your business be more profitable, but also it might help another business by providing them their raw material.

That's what Herefordshire business people heard at a special breakfast meeting in the city last week.

More than 40 senior business people from the region heard how they could improve their companies by focussing on waste management and how to best work together to increase efficiency.

The event, hosted by Bulmers with Sustainability West Midlands, featured a wide range and size of businesses.

Various speakers shared their own experiences of implementing resource efficient practices, and how their business had been significantly and positively affected.

Delegates heard how reusing and recycling what was once considered waste could boost their profits.

Also covered were the benefits of developing or evolving a philosophy of sustainable management and processes throughout the business and workforce.

Richard Heathcote, Bulmers' sustainable development manager, spoke about shifting from man's way of thinking about waste to nature's way of thinking, where nothing is wasted and everything is recycled.

Each of the speakers, Dr Alastair King, general manager, Bulmers, Adrian Struthers, sales director, Sanders Polyfilm, Graham Dunhill, director of environment, Herefordshire Council, and Spencer Murtagh operations director, Kingspan, spoke about good business sense realised through effective waste management.

"The purpose of the day was to share a wealth of local knowledge to the greater benefit of Herefordshire" said John Sharpe, director of Sustainability West Midlands.

"The increasing legislation around waste disposal and associated increasing costs of landfill made this a high focus subject for all businesses.

"The real interest in this event demonstrated the need for other opportunities to share good practice in resource efficiency in Herefordshire and the wider region."

For further information on how your industrial waste might be of use to another business, contact NISP (National Industrial Symbiosis Partnership) at www.nisp.org.uk.