The council told letsrecycle.com that so far 1,120 households out of a possible 4,500 have signed up to the scheme, which rewards residents with Nectar points for paper recycling. To date, over 500,000 nectar points have been awarded.
The six month pilot began in September 2011, (see letsrecycle.com story) and is available to residents living in Cotteridge and Erdington.
Residents are given an address label and bar-coded sticker to put on their blue paper and card recycling boxes. The bar codes are scanned before the paper is collected. Residents receive 25 Nectar points every time they leave their paper out for recycling.
Commenting on the uptake of the scheme, Councillor Timothy Huxtable, cabinet member for transport, environment and regeneration at Birmingham, said: This scheme is proving a great success, with resident take-up at levels very rarely seen in voluntary participation projects of this type, bringing significant benefits to both residents in terms of the Nectar points they are collecting, and the wider city and environment in terms of wide-scale proactive participation in recycling activity.
The council said the scheme has helped to drive up its recycling rate, which for 2010/11 sat at 31%. In the first five weeks of the scheme a total of 85.56 tonnes of paper were collected in the trial areas. Once collected the paper is sent to Smurfit Kappas Birmingham mill.
A spokesman for the Birmingham said: We have been really encouraged by the clear increase in recycling rates achieved through the pilot scheme, and will certainly be exploring what lessons we can learn from the pilot that could be rolled out across the wider city in order to drive up recycling rates.
City wide
The council had previously stated that if the pilot was successful the scheme would be rolled out city-wide. However no further indication has been given by the council as to whether this will happen.
Will Shuckburgh, Nectars client development director, said: We have a pilot going on which started in September that we have seen to be very strong and residents are responding to it very well. However because its a pilot we wont know the full results until the end of the trial.
He added: We are seeing strong initial results and we are confident that it should be rolled out city wide.
If the trial is successful, Nectar will also be considering launching the scheme in other areas of the UK. Mr Shuckburgh said: We are in discussions with a number of councils and really looking at a number of things that we are trying to do and what they think they can incentivise people for.
Bexley
The uptake seen by Birmingham is similar to that of Bexleys Green Points scheme which sees residents in the London borough receive points for increasing their recycling and reducing the amount of waste they produce.
In December 2011 it was reported that the scheme was off to a flying start with 25% of households in the trial area activating their accounts (see letsrecycle.com story).
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