At a conference in London yesterday following completion of a 3.1 million pilot study into recycling incentives, a Department official said incentive schemes were more effective in educating people about recycling than in actually increasing recycling tonnages.
Defra's study included 50 trial incentive schemes in the UK (see letsrecycle.com story) . The Department has compared the results of the trials to direct charging in America and Europe as part of its review of England's waste strategy.
Claire Wilding, head of Defra's local authority waste funding and governance team, said: “The incentive schemes did not have such huge benefits in increasing participation as alternate weekly collections, compulsory recycling and charging. But they should not be seen in terms of tonnage but rather for their wider impact of increasing awareness of recycling.”
Ms Wilding was speaking at a Resource Recovery Forum conference on assessing the affect of incentives in changing household behaviour.
She said that the incentives study, which uncovered no “one size fits all” solution for local authorities, had increased recycling by as much as 15% and had valuable lessons to teach.
However, she suggested that incentive schemes were not always the best value option for councils. She said: “Incentives locally are very popular and get lots of coverage but there are concerns over costs.”
Charging
Commenting on direct charging systems used abroad, Ms Wilding said that charging for household waste collections separately from Council Tax had the potential to reduce service costs and had a “major impact on waste produced and recycled”.
In Germany, she said, recycling rates had increased by as much as 64% as a result of direct charging.
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However, the Defra official did not give any commitment to introducing direct charging in the UK beyond repeating ministers' comments that the Department is interested in the issue.
She said: “There is research in hand to examine potential impact in the UK.”
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