The councils, which successfully applied for funding under DCLG’s £11.1 million Recycling Rewards Scheme, will aim to roll out the initiatives from July 2016.
All three boroughs are tendering the contract to deliver the schemes jointly, but the three-year contract is divided into lots with each borough tailoring the initiative to the needs of its residents.
Bexley, which already has a rewards scheme through its partnership with London Green Points, will look to extend the lifetime of its incentives through the new contract.
The council, which secured £405,743 through the DCLG scheme, is looking to increase recycling amongst an estimated 78,000 properties including flats.
By the end of the contract it aims to have reduced residual waste by around 4,000 tonnes with an excess of 2,000 tonnes recycling. The scheme will be required to partner with contractor Serco and housing association Gallions Peabody.
Camden
Camden meanwhile is looking to minimise waste among 46,000 council-managed estate properties, while boosting its overall recycling rate by 10%. In 2014/15, the borough achieved a rate of 26.3%.
The council received £435,968 via the scheme, and will focus on reducing contamination rates in dry recycling by 9% and by 5% for food waste by 2019.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Camden recycling manager Ann Baker said the authority was also looking at automatically entering householders who recycle correctly into monthly prize draws using in-cab technology. The idea is based on a similar incentive rolled out by Southampton city council.
She said: “We are doing a lot with our housing estates and appointed an officer specifically for recycling on the estates. We are looking at the use of key fobs and using refuse chutes for recycling but need to take into account the different attitudes among residents.”
Hackney
The London borough of Hackney, which is tendering the contract on behalf of the trio, will also look to boost its recycling via a similar incentive scheme.
Hackney received £637,031 through the DCLG scheme and will use it to ‘embed sustainable waste behaviours’ in all of Hackney’s 107,000 households.
The council wants to see households able to earn Community Points with additional incentives for 52,000 flats. Through the incentives it is hoping to achieve a 3% recycling boost while diverting 7,734 tonnes of waste from landfill.
Recycling incentive schemes have been particularly widely used in London, with Ealing, Havering, Westminster and Kingston upon Thames all employing some sort of reward initiative for residents. The majority of are delivered by Greenredeem, formerly Recyclebank, and Local Green Points.
However, in some parts of the country the schemes have fallen victim to local authority budget cuts, with Halton borough council – one of the first authorities to use the incentives – axing the service in October 2015 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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