LAWR

May 2015 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 11 WASTE COLLECTION The communication conundrum With recycling rates slowing down, the pressure is on to find new ways to engage with residents. Is now the time for rewards or the hard line approach? he DCLG has announced that £11.1m has been awarded through its Recycling Rewards Scheme (see page 8). "Rewards for recycling show how working with families can deliver environmental benefits without the draconian approach of punishing people," said secretary of state Eric Pickles. The funding will be spread across 45 local authority areas, with residents who recycle offered prizes, such as discounts from local shops, cash for local schools or donations to community groups. The scheme has its critics, not least because it is restricted to those offering a weekly collection of either residual or food waste. It's the carrot approach. In the other camp are those ready to start brandishing the stick. Robin Baird, waste strategy coordinator for Falkirk Council, told a recent conference in Edinburgh that the time for "fluffy requests" has passed. "The option not to participate cannot continue," he explained. Just how to encourage higher participation rates was a key debate at the Holyrood conference – Waste: Achieving Scotland's environmental goals. Scotland has already missed its 2013 target to recycle 50% of household waste, with nine of 32 local authorities hitting the mark. By 2020 they will all have to reach 60% and the environment secretary is promising "radical" policy changes. High on the list could well be unified recycling schemes. "We have to ensure the public is on board," Richard Lochhead explained. "We can do a lot better to make [the collections systems] less confusing." Simplifying the system could, of course, result in knock-on savings in terms of engagement – there could be one set of campaign materials for the whole country. But how much would thousands of new bins cost? And let's not forget that Scotland is a nation of five million people; it's a big ask but nothing compared to rolling a one- size-fits-all system out across the UK. Stephen Hagan, spokesperson for sustainability at COSLA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, countered that decisions have to be made at a local level, given differences in geography, infrastructure and budgets. With austerity hitting all councils hard, campaigns to boost recycling and reduce contamination can be the first to go. "The time will come when the communications budget comes under pressure," said Andy Williams, chartered waste manager at Edinburgh City Council. In Edinburgh there will soon be a new food waste plant to fill. "We have to re-engage with residents," Williams explained, recalling the council's shift from weekly to fortnightly residual collections a couple of years back. Food waste collections were accelerated, he said, and "I'm not sure the service was good enough to meet the demand we had". Encouraging residents to recycle their food waste is undoubtedly a challenge in some areas. Those at the conference noted that between a fifth and a third of residual waste is food; this despite separate collections for food waste. In Scotland, councils will have to offer separate food waste collections in non-rural areas come January. "It's easy to deliver bins but it's hard to get people to use them," Williams noted. "The big challenge is communicating with residents. I'm not under any illusions that it will be easy. We may look at incentives," he added. However, as a report by Serco in January 2014 found, there is not a wide enough evidence base to determine whether incentives work. The DCLG fund could change that, and provide some clarity where Serco found only confusion: "The residents' view on how their behaviour may change as a result of reward schemes implies a limited impact," it concluded. "However, it is possible that there may be a level of reward which is sufficient to influence contamination." Lucy O'Shea, an economist at the University of Bath who has been studying the relationship between psychology and the economics of household recycling, is not so sure. Presenting some of her findings in Edinburgh, she said that people are not intrinsically motivated to recycle more if they are paid – in fact they might even contribute less. People are not intrinsically motivated to recycle more if they are paid – in fact they might even contribute less T

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