RecycleBank at heart of Veolias Scottish strategy

Waste management firm Veolia Environmental Services has identified the roll-out of the recycling incentive scheme RecycleBank as a key means of increasing its foothold in the Scottish waste sector.

Speaking at the Scottish Waste & Resources Conference in Glasgow earlier this week (Octobr 6), Paul Levett, deputy chief executive at Veolia, said that it would be looking to emulate work it had done with English councils under the American rewards based recycling scheme.

Mr Levett, accompanied by RecycleBank UK managing director Sue Igoe, said he intended to meet with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) to discuss the potential for Scottish local authorities to adopt the system.

Speaking at the conference, he said: “We already have plans to strengthen our presence in Scotland from our Grangemouth HQ and are fully aware of the Scottish Government's policy for Zero Waste Scotland and its linkage with the waste and climate change agendas.

“This conference represents an excellent opportunity to promote a new approach to recycling which offers the opportunity for major increases in landfill diversion and is clearly preferable to punitive penalty regimes.”

Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Mr Levett said that Veolia's presence in Scotland was mainly centred on commercial and industrial waste but an opportunity to work with local authorities stemmed from the fact that the majority of Scottish local authorities currently use in-house collection services.

He said: “We believe that this is the right time to offer our services to the municipal solid waste market and we believe that the combination of our strong track record with English local authorities and the differentiation of the Recyclebank service will be a powerful combination.”

And, Mr Levett said that the RecycleBank model could help Scotland achieve its ambitious long-term recycling targets under its Zero Waste Plan, which aims to boost recycling to 70% by 2025 (see letsrecycle.com story).

RecycleBank

At present, two English councils have undertaken full rollouts of the scheme, the Royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and Halton borough council, although RecycleBank claim to have around 25 councils in discussions over adopting it (see letsrecycle.com story).

The scheme works by measuring the weight of dry recyclables residents put out at the kerbside and issuing corresponding points. The points can then be transferred into vouchers and discounts for participating local and national stores. Householders can earn up to £135 per year in rewards in this way.

The incentive scheme has been particularly welcomed among Conservative politicians and, last month, it emerged that Defra had attended a secret meeting discussing rewards-based schemes, most notably the RecycleBank model (see letsrecycle.com story).

Commenting on Mr Levett's speech, Ms Igoe said: “We believe this programme is ideally suited to households in Scotland – particularly in urban areas. The RecycleBank programme fits with existing co-mingled and kerbside sort collections, or can be introduced as part of a new service.

“This is a positive step forward for local authorities, residents and businesses. Getting people to recycle a greater amount of waste more often is the first step in total waste minimisation.”