Funded by the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB), Recycle for London (RfL) was set up in 2010 as a communications programme with the aim of reducing waste with an emphasis on food and increasing reuse and recycling in the capital.
Final activity on the three-year programme finished on March 31 2013, leaving an overall underspend of around 1,139,000, according to a report presented to the LWARB last week (May 9).
The largest portion of this unspent money was 465,000 originally allocated to support the London Reuse Network. However, the report states that this money has not been spent due to capacity challenges and times scales with the Network (see letsrecycle.com story).
Part of the underspend also came about because WRAP were able to lever in additional funds from Defra match-funding for the Borough Services Support programme, which saved 448,000. A further 50,000 was left over from RfLs campaigns and localisation budget.
Programme
Delivered in partnership with the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), the RfL programme ended LWARB decided to focus on more local rather than broad, London-wide campaigns.
‘This is a very positive outcome for us as we have delivered a successful and award winning RfL programme over three years and we have money left over.’
Bassam Mahfouz, Ealing borough councillor and LWARB board member
As well as supporting boroughs with local waste prevention campaigns, the RfL has also helped to promote Londons Love Food Hate Waste campaign by organising food and cookery workshops, compiling a newsletter and training a 2937 Food Waste Champion volunteers to promote community food waste reduction.
The RfL was initially given a budget of around 3.5 million over its lifetime when it was set up three years ago. The report shows that 1,787,371 of the RfL budget has so far been spent since the programme was established three years ago.
Re-allocated
Speaking at last weeks board meeting, Ealing borough councillor Bassam Mahfouz, who presented the update on Recycle for London, said that the money would be re-allocated.
He commented: There is around 1 million leftover in the budget that we are looking to reallocate to the LWARB Efficiencies Programme.
This is a very positive outcome for us as we have delivered a successful and award winning RfL programme over three years and we have money left over. It is good news that a significant amount of this unspent money will be utilised to fund the Borough Support Service going forward. Our continued commitment to the Borough Service Support programme will help to ensure that boroughs are able to maximise their recycling.
Efficiencies
The 4.6 million Efficiencies Programme was launched by LWARB in March 2012 in order to help London local authorities save money on waste services by promoting greater joint working and procurement opportunities between boroughs (see letsrecycle.com story).
According to LWARB, around 800,000 of the leftover money will be used to help fund a further two years of the Borough Service Support programme, which was set up as part of RfL to enable London local authorities to apply for operational support, communications advice and funding from LWARB for re-use and recycling projects. 65 Borough Service Support projects have been completed to date.
Although the RfL programme has come to an end, Borough Services Support will continue under the LWARB Efficiencies Programme as it was recognised what an important programme this is, Mr Mahfouz told letsrecycle.com.
The remaining unspent money from the RfL budget has also been reallocated to the LWARB efficiencies programme, with a decision on exactly how it will be utilised due to be made in the coming weeks.
A 2012/13 annual report and a three-year RfL Programme Evaluation Report are due to be submitted to LWARB in the summer for review. Mr Mahfouz told letsrecycle.com the report would more closely evaluate the success of RfL campaigns and look at whether its website and branding might still be utilised.
He said: There is good branding around Recycle for London and people are aware of it, so even though the three year programme has come to an end we are still discussing how that might be used going forward. It is something that we will look at in the final RfL report this summer.
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