Second council set for full RecycleBank rollout

The Cheshire local authority becomes the second UK council to unveil plans to make the scheme available to all its residents, after the Royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead announced last month that it plans to bring the incentive scheme to 60,000 households from July 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story).

The scheme, which sees residents awarded vouchers and discounts for local and national retailers based on the amount of material they place at the kerbside for recycling, is set to begin rolling it out to all 47,000 households in Halton “in the next couple of months”. The roll-out is expected to be completed by 2011.

A spokesman for RecycleBank told letsrecycle.com: “There is no specific date due to the logistics involved in introducing the scheme to the borough, which is done through phases. However, it will be in the next couple of months.”

The full roll-out comes in the wake of a six month trial of the RecycleBank scheme launched in October 2009, which covered 10,000 households in seven pilot areas (see letsrecycle.com story).

RecycleBank claims that, under the trial, residents involved in the scheme recycled, on average, 60% more waste than those not included in the scheme and 4,662 households activated their online rewards account in order to claim RecycleBank points.

To date, participating residents have earned over 3.8 million RecycleBank Points and ordered over 4,200 rewards to spend in the borough's shops, restaurants and leisure facilities.

Sue Igoe, UK managing director of RecycleBank, said: “The success of phase one in Halton has demonstrated that incentives can motivate people to change their behaviour, rewarding themselves as well as the environment and the local economy along the way.

Scheme

The voluntary scheme rewards residents with points for recycling their paper, plastic bottles, cardboard, glass bottles and jars, and metal cans through the council's blue bin recycling service. The points can then be exchanged for money off goods and services at 130 local businesses across the borough.

Commenting on the rollout of the trial to the whole of Halton, Ms Igoe said: “We are delighted that we can now offer this service to more homes in the borough, with the potential to divert even more waste from landfill. We want to make recycling part of resident's daily life, and this service makes it easy for individuals and communities to do their bit for the environment and the borough.”

The scheme is one of a number of initiatives introduced by Halton borough council in the past 18 months to help improve recycling rates, which have included extending its multi-material recycling service.