King’s Lynn and West Norfolk to roll out recycling incentives

Due to be rolled out next month, the West Norfolk Recycling Rewards will see residents rewarded points as a community, based on the weight of their communal recycling and residual waste bins.

Householders will earn more points as the amount of recycling increases and refuse decreases with each collected with each collection round.

At the end of every month, the resident who has earned the most Green Points will win a £50 voucher, while runners up will receive a £25 voucher for their efforts to spend at local retail outlets.

Points earned as a community will be used to support six partner charities and community projects, with £6000 in donations expected during the first year.

The model adopted by West Norfolk will be familiar to other local authorities who have taken up recycling incentives in recent years. The schemes have proved particularly popular in London, with the majority operated by Local Green Points and Greenredeem, formerly Recyclebank UK (see letsrecycle.com story).

The West Norfolk scheme has been supported through a recycling rewards grant from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) – securing £272,606 in funding.

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Councillor Brian Long, the authority’s cabinet member for environment, explained the scheme would help boost recycling in the borough at the official launch this week. In 2014/15, King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council achieved an overall recycling rate of 41.9%.

He said: “We are always looking for ways to make recycling in West Norfolk easy, and to encourage residents to recycle more. This scheme is a fantastic opportunity for residents to get rewarded for all the effort they put into recycling the right things in the right way and we hope that it will encourage residents to do as much as they can. We’re also proud to be supporting some fantastic local charities with this scheme and hope that residents are keen to get on board.”

Graham Simmonds, managing director of Local Green Points, added: “We hope that the mix of community and individual rewards will appeal to as many residents as possible and are looking forward to seeing improvements over the next two years.”