Birmingham trial could lead to more Nectar schemes
24 August 2011
Nectar has said it is keen to work on other local authority recycling incentive schemes after being chosen ahead of RecycleBank to run a pilot paper recycling rewards scheme for Birmingham city council.
This is the first time the loyalty card company has worked with a council. The nectar scheme will begin on September 2 and run for six months until March 2012.
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- Nectar points can be redeemed at stores including Sainsbury's and Debenhams
Up to 4,500 homes will be involved in the pilot, which involves residents being given an address label and a bar-coded sticker to put on their blue paper and card recycling boxes, which are collected fortnightly. Residents will then be able to register with the council online, but will also have to obtain a Nectar card.
The bar codes will then be scanned just before the paper is collected and all households who have put paper out for collection will receive 25 Nectar points – worth around 12.5 pence. Nectar points can be redeemed with retailers, travel companies, at restaurants and at theme parks.
Birmingham said that, if the pilot was “successful”, it would consider rolling the scheme out to all 400,000 households city-wide.
Government support
The idea of rewarding householders for recycling has been identified by government as a key way to encourage householders to recycle more. In particular, the US-devised RecycleBank rewards scheme has been singled out for praise by ministers, following its introduction in Windsor & Maidenhead and Halton.
But, speaking to letsrecycle.com today (August 24), Birmingham city council’s waste minimisation manager, Phil Brook, revealed that, while the council had engaged in talks with RecycleBank, it had decided to work with Nectar instead.
“We did look at other schemes,” he said. “We did consider RecycleBank, but we also looked at smaller schemes in London and in Manchester. We really are convinced that if you give people a route for good behaviour it’s better than giving them a big stick."
He added: “We had talks with RecycleBank, and may still do a trial with them – we haven’t ruled it out altogether. This doesn’t mean to say we won’t go with RecycleBank.”
Funding
The only funding source for the pilot scheme to be named by Birmingham is council body the West Midlands Improvement Efficiency Initiative. But, Mr Brooks said “we have got funding for it from more than one source.”
For its part, Nectar would not reveal whether it was involved in funding the initiative, simply stating it had a “commercial relationship” with other unnamed companies involved.
Mr Brooks suggested that eventually the scheme could be self-funded through the sale of the increased volumes of paper collected to Smuriff Kappa’s mill in Birmingham.
He said: “For every tonne of paper we get a payment. If we get more paper we get more money, so it could fund itself.”
Popularity
Outlining why he thought the loyalty card had been an attractive option for the Birmingham pilot, Nectar’s Will Shuckburgh, claimed that the scheme offered particular benefits because of the existing popularity of the Nectar scheme.
“The reason we think Nectar works very well is we have got over half the UK collecting points, and we’ve got almost half the population of Birmingham collecting points,” he said.
He adding that this meant the council ‘didn’t have to go and tell people how to use a new scheme”.
Mr Shuckburgh explained that Nectar’s success in offering its cardholders, or collectors, points when they reused bags at Sainsbury’s proved that “collectors like earning points for green behaviour”.
And, he said Nectar was now “keen” to work with other councils on similar initiatives. “I think it’s a really interesting area,” he said. “Local authorities seem to be coming up with ideas all the time.
“It’s something we’re really open to. We know it works for encouraging these behaviours and we’re really open to talking to councils about other ways to earn more points,” he added.
While he could not say whether Nectar was already in discussions with other councils, he did note: “We talk to lots of people all the time. It’s something we’re interested in – it’s a pilot in Birmingham, so we’ll see how it develops.”
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