RecycleBank uptake stalls over cost fears

The uptake of rewards-based recycling schemes such as RecycleBank appears to have stalled due to concerns over the cost of implementing them.

Last year, the government said it strongly supported rewards-based schemes and included a pledge to encourage councils to pay residents to recycle in its Coalition Agreement (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, to date, only two local authorities in the UK have adopted full-scale roll-outs of the American rewards-based scheme RecycleBank scheme; the Royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in June 2010 and Halton borough council in August 2010. And, a rewards-based scheme known as Sort & Save was launched by private firm Siteserv Recycling in conjunction with Rhondda Cynon Taf county borough in November 2010.

Accordingly, support forincentive schemes from central government appears to have waned in recent months, with no formal comments on incentives and little to no discussion of the topic during talks on the impending review of waste policy.

A spokeswoman for RecycleBank, which sees residents receive vouchers and discounts based on the amount they recycle at the kerbside, told letsrecycle.com that it was continuing to discuss potential trials with councils.

She said: There is nothing planned in the next few weeks. There is nothing concrete at the moment, there are a lot of people talking and having meetings but, at the moment, the only concrete ones actually in place are in the Royal Borough [of Windsor and Maidenhead] and Halton.

The most promising development is seemingly in Nottingham, with the city counciltelling letsrecycle.com that it would be pursuing the RecycleBank model as part of its Waste-Less Nottingham: Waste Strategy 2010-2030, which it published last month. However, it was unable to give any specifics of how or when the incentive-scheme would be rolled out.

Budgets

The Local Government Association (LGA) which has previously raised concerns about the use of rewards-based schemes said that the cost of implementing an incentive-based scheme would not be attractive to cash-strapped councils.

Clive Harris, waste policy officer at the LGA, said: For us incentives are always a good idea but it isnt a panacea and obviously with Windsor and Maidenhead everyone is keeping an eye on that and Halton as well but at present all councils are looking at now is how they can avoid European fines at the lowest possible cost.

Collection authorities are quite small district councils and they are not going to have huge amounts of money to spend in terms of incentive schemes at the moment, it is about avoiding fines first as a driver. I am sure councils support incentives but it is not the best time for them to justify putting 2 million into a scheme that could save them 4 million over the next four years, for example.

Barriers

Other local authorities in the capital have highlighted costs as a major barrier to implementing the scheme -particularly the initial outlay needed to roll out 240 litre wheeled bins to households, weighing and data collection software and a subscription to RecycleBank to administer reward points.

Documents seen by letsrecycle.com show that the London borough of Richmond-upon-Thames approached RecycleBank in February 2010 to assess the potential of implementing the scheme in the South West London local authority.

However, according to the minutes of a meeting of the councils environment, sustainability and community overview and scrutiny committee in September 2010, Richmond said it had opted not to pursue the system due to the costs involved.

In a financial breakdown, Richmond revealed that it would cost it 1.905 million to roll-out the service for all 65,000 households, which was broken down to 1.625 million for new wheeled bins and 28,000-a-time for weighing and software equipment for each of its 10 collection vehicles.

Furthermore, the council said it stood to lose revenue on the sale of recyclates collected as it would have to move from a source separated service to a commingled collection to accommodate the RecycleBank system. This was set against only 600,000 of projected savings being achieved through round reductions and savings on landfill disposal.

The council noted: Given the substantial capital and ongoing revenue costs and the likely negative impact on income received for recyclate and the minimal predicted rise in the recycling rate between one and two percentage points a partnership with RecycleBank is not being pursued at this time.

Capital

Elsewhere in the capital, the London borough of Croydon was among the first local authorities to meet with RecycleBank following the launch of its initial trial in Windsor in June 2009.

In an official council response on the issue made to councillor Mike Neal in December 2009, the local authority stated that it had opted not to run a pilot of the scheme following this meeting.

And, speaking to letsrecycle.com, spokesman said: There were two fundamental issues for us [in not running a trial]. One – the physical constraints of many Croydon homes means that additional wheeled bins are unlikely to be easily introduced.

And, the economics of the proposal did not stack up for us at the time and we have delivered improved recycling rates using our own measures in the intervening time.

Role

It is not just the price of introducing the scheme that has proven a barrier. Some councils are unsure of what role RecycleBank actually plays in administering the scheme.

One council officer, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed that their own local authority had declined to adopt a popular rewards-based recycling scheme due to its inability to justify to members what a subscription fee would actually provide.

As far as they were concerned, said the source. We would be paying an external company hundreds of thousands of pounds to do something that we couldnt really quantify and could probably do ourselves with an in-house system.

London

London Mayor Boris Johnson has been a key proponent of rewards-based schemes, particularly RecycleBank.

However, the former Conservative MP was last year taken to task by London Assembly members over his failure to make good on a pledge to introduce an incentive-based pilot scheme in the capital.

In a questions and answer sessions in held City Hall in March 2010, Assembly Member Mike Tuffrey criticised the fact that Mayor had moved from actively working on a trial for 20,000 London households to hoping a trial would take place.

Responding to Mr Tuffrey, Mayor Boris Johnson said that there had been some concerns that there were difficulties with the politicisation of RecycleBank.

He said: I think it is a fantastic scheme. One of the difficulties is that I am afraid that it is identified as being a slightly Tory scheme. We are finding that we are meeting some resistance in Labour and Liberal Democrat boroughs.

Mayor Boris Johnson did state that he was keen to see a RecycleBank pilot scheme launched in London in 2011 under his draft municipal waste management strategy (see letsrecycle.com story).

Last month, a number of local authorities in London came out in support of compulsory recycling schemes based around financial penalties rather than financial rewards (see letsrecycle.com story).