WRAP targets consistency with £1m fund

And, he revealed that WRAP is to use £1 million of its existing Defra funding to help councils develop “consistency” programmes for collecting recyclables.

He told delegates that since taking up office earlier this summer, he had split the charity into three ‘teams’ – one called the ‘Government team’ headed up by Peter Madox and the other two covering businesses under Steve Creed and with Richard Swannell as director development programmes.

Priorities, he said, included the improvement of improve household recycling rates and reducing consumer food waste as well as working on the SCAP clothing action plan.

Explaining the work on consistency, which has identified three main ways to collect recyclables and food waste, he said: “The reason for this is that recycling in England is flatlining, it has stalled everywhere except in Wales.”

He referred to research which found that “people are saying their council doesn’t collect everything they want to recycle” and suggested the consistency programme and communications would help overcome this. “There are not so many different materials collected but there are hundreds of different collection systems.”

Savings

Dr Gover highlighted that the consistency programme had been calculated to make big savings for local authorities and that this would be on a voluntary approach based on the business case.

And, he ruled out funding support for infrastructure – “Defra has said no” – but explained that WRAP has allocated £1m of its Defra funding to provide fully funded support to local authorities in England that wish to assess the business case for greater consistency in their area and “explore the opportunities it could bring”. (See below for more details)

The consistency programme, he said, “would save reprocessors £33 million in costs of contamination and so on and for you we think you could save £400 million by 2025. But it is not just about local authorities, there also reprocessors, brands, retailers and manufacturers involved. The Co-op is leading a group on packaging and Unilever is looking at how we can communicate more.”

Questioned by one officer from Suffolk about the fact that the consistency programme accepts that glass can be collected commingled, Dr Gover said with reference to the TEEP rules that “one of the challenges with the single stream is demonstrating compliance”, adding: “I think it will be harder to demonstrate that that qualifies, I can’t say that it will, that’s your part really.”

Consistency Fund

The £1m Defra-sourced funding money is available for support to councils in England to assess the business case for greater consistency. WRAP, in a document about the programme, said that it is welcoming ‘expressions of interest from local authorities in England, either individually or in partnership, that wish to assess how they might collect the core set out within the consistency framework using one of the three identified collection methods.

It says that the objectives are:

• The collection of a common set of materials for recycling that includes as a minimum: paper; card, plastic bottles, plastic packaging – pots tubs and trays; metal packaging – cans, aerosols and foil; glass bottles and jars; food and beverage cartons; and food waste.
• Rationalising collection to three common systems.