The Berkshire local authority first introduced a trial using its green waste collections in June 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story) and extended it to cover mixed dry recyclables from September 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Assessing the performance of the six-month dry recycling trial – which has one month still to run – Terry Gould, head of public protection at Windsor and Maidenhead, told letsrecycle.com that the performance was “certainly exceeding what we were anticipating”.
Mr Gould said: “What I am proud to say at this stage is that we are happy to say we can experience a 30-35% increase in what we have experienced in collected kerbside weight comparing a [kerbside] box with an activated [RecycleBank] bin.”
However, Mr Gould was quick to point out the difference between collected material and increases in the local authority's recycling rate – as not all the material could necessarily be recycled.
“It is not the same as recycling,” he said: “The reason is it is not recycling rate is because dry recycling is only a contributing factor of your overall total recycling rate. So it isn't equal to a recycling rate increase.”
Activation
In total, 2,843 households were in the green waste trial area, with 75% activating their RecycleBank accounts – which meant they could receive rewards for their efforts. Under the dry recycling scheme, 63% of 3,729 households activated their accounts.
All houses in the pilot scheme areas were issued 240 litre blue RecycleBank bins, complete with chip to record the weight of material placed at the kerbside for recycling, while those outside the trial scheme retained the standard issue recycling boxes.
Mr Gould said that this meant they would be able to measure the performance of the houses that took part in the trial against houses issued the bins but not participating as well as those under the existing council system.
He said there was a 22% increase in the amount of material collected in the activated blue RecycleBank bins compared to the standard boxes, and there was a 23% increase in the amount of material collected in activated RecycleBank bins compared to households with the bins but not participating.
“I think it is all evidence that incentivisation works, however, the issue is to what extent incentivisation works,” commented Mr Gould.
Support
Mr Gould also stated that the level of support for the scheme was high, with 91% of customers saying that they found it easy to participate, while 69% found rewards ordering simple and 72% regarded the range of rewards as “great”.
He added that it could be interpreted that the participation rate also ran contrary to the notion of people being adverse to chipped bins.
Discussing some of the lessons from the trial, Mr Gould said it had been impacted by the inclement conditions during December and January and also residents stockpiling material ahead of the trial being launched in September.
However, Mr Gould said he hoped to assess the true impact of these incidents with a more thorough review. He said: “So the first few weeks were higher than usual and then we have had the extreme temperatures combined with weather. So I want to see how that has affected it.”
Windsor and Maidenhead councillors are set to meet in March to discuss the results of the trial and also contemplate the possibility of running a borough-wide version of the recycling scheme.
Reduction
Mr Gould also indicated that the rewards-based system could, in the future, be moved from a process of rewarding recycling to one that rewards reduction of waste using the same equipment.
“My vision is we are going to flip this on its head and start rewarding reduction, so only in the fullness of time, once we have assessed the possibilities, we would reward people for their ongoing attempts to reduce,” he said.
Political
RecycleBank has emerged as something of a darling of the Conservative Party, with leading party members such as George Osborne, Boris Johnson and David Cameron endorsing it over the past 18 months (see letsrecycle.com story).
Despite the supposed Conservative-focus, Labour-led Halton borough council in Cheshire emerged as the second UK council to introduce the mixed dry recycling trial of the scheme in October 2009.
A review of the performance of the system in Halton is expected to be published jointly by the council and RecycleBank later this week.
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