WRAP seeks urban authorities for consistency work

And, the charity has said that it is particularly keen “to work with more urban authorities, where we know achieving consistent service that deliver high recycling can be even more challenging”.

WRAP is also looking to work with councils or waste partnerships planning to tender collection contracts in the next few years and emphasised that “working towards consistency doesn’t mean you have to do it all at once”.

Vision

The consistency framework is part of achieving a WRAP and Defra-supported vision, where every household in England can recycle a common set of dry recyclable materials and food waste, collected in one of three different ways.

Other areas also feature in the consistency plans including by 2025 an ambition to have packaging designed to be “recyclable, where practical and environmentally beneficial, and is labelled clearly to indicate whether it can be recycled or not”, making it easier for households to recycle more.

In 2016 it was announced that WRAP had allocated £1m of its Defra funding to provide fully funded support to local authorities in England that wish to assess the business case for greater consistency in their area and “explore the opportunities it could bring”. (See letsrecycle.com story)

To date, WRAP has supported 64 local authorities through the funding, and is looking to provide support for more.

Recycling

WRAP claims that greater consistency could result in 11.6 million tonnes of materials and food waste collected for recycling over eight years – which would increase household recycling rate in England by 7%. And consistency could save reprocessors £33 million in costs of contamination.

Somerset is cited by WRAP as one county that has already benefitted from a consistent approach to its services with one collections service working across the county.

Five district councils and Somerset County Council formed the Somerset Waste Partnership in 2007 and have seen their recycling rate rise to 52.85%, with 89% of residents satisfied with the recycling service.

Steve Read, former managing director of SWP, has said: “Operating the same service across the whole county simplifies things for residents, elected members who represent them and the contractor who delivers the service.”

This week Nick Cater, senior communications officer of SWP, added: “We’re proud that we have established a consistent collections programme across Somerset, and aim to do more in the future. But the reality is that nationally, councils are all on different waste and recycling collections contracts with different timetables, so attempts to be consistent will inevitably be piecemeal. Consistency is an important piece of work but needs to work alongside other initiatives to reduce waste, such as the success in reducing use of single-use carrier bags and progress on container deposit schemes.”