Mayor Boris Johnson has long been an advocate of financial recycling incentive schemes and stated in his latest draft municipal waste management strategy that he wants to see a pilot RecycleBank scheme in the city in 2011 (see letsrecycle.com )
Andrew Richmond, waste policy and programmes manager at the GLA, said: “Our view is that there is a preference for incentives over the stick approach.”
However, Mr Richmond said that certain factors needed to be in place before local authorities could offer the incentives route to residents. Three key elements must be ready prior to schemes, such as RecycleBank, being introduced, he said. These are:
- Access to recycling;
- Recycling capacity on the doorstep, e.g. enough room for boxes/wheeled bins;
- And, a communications strategy to make residents aware of why recycling is important and what can be recycled.
He added: “If you have all this the incentive can help [to raise recycling rates].”
Terry Gould, head of public protection at the Royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, reported that recycling volumes had increased by 40% since the RecycleBank incentive scheme was introduced in his borough (see letsrecycle.com).
He revealed that it had cost the council around £350,000 to retrofit the lorries with the specialist scanners and bin lifts, and £1.2 million for wheeled bins with chips, to record how much residents are recycling.
The stick
In contrast to this Nicola Cross, environmental services manager for waste strategy at the London borough of Barnet, revealed that the council's compulsory recycling scheme, which takes non-recyclers to court, where they could be fined £1,000, cost nothing to introduce and led to a 28% increase in recycling and a collection increase of 3,871 tonnes after one year – the scheme was introduced in 2005 (see letsrecycle.com story).
There have been no fines since the scheme was introduced. Ms Cross explained that usually, a letter alerting residents of their failure to recycle was enough to get them to participate. She explained that six households have been threatened with court action for not recycling but letters explaining that they would have to go to the local magistrates' court had been enough to get the offenders recycling.
Minimisation
The Environment Committee expressed concern that incentive schemes, such as RecycleBank, did not place enough emphasis on reduction and re-use, which they said should come before recycling in the waste hierarchy.
Sue Igoe, managing director of RecycleBank, argued that her scheme had addressed this and older schemes in the USA were already working on minimisation. She explained that RecycleBank used recycling as a hook to get people engaged, and could work around minimisation at a later stage.
In the USA it has partners, such as eBay, which allow people to earn incentive points when the buy/and sell second hand items on the site. It is also working with electronics firms so scheme members can get points for recycling WEEE.
Mr Richmond said that the GLA was looking at a variety of incentives schemes in addition to RecycleBank, notably Green Rewards. He said the GLA had put seven London authorities in touch with RecycleBank and other incentive schemes.
He said: “Our view is that we should use a carrot approach – but it should not always be the same carrot. It's about changing behaviour and not a one size fits all approach. We need to identify what incentives are appropriate for a particular area.”
He explained that in the longer term the GLA wanted to look towards incentives for waste minimisation.
Chris Dow, of the Dagenham-based Closed Loop recycling facility added: “Incentives are part of the modern approach.”
The discussion will feed into a report the committee plans to publish at the beginning of 2011 and is expected to complement research being carried out into why recycling rates vary so widely across the capital (see letsrecycle.com story).
Register for free to comment