Council to Give Families M&S Vouchers...For Putting their Rubbish in the Right Bins

Written by Steve Doughty, Daily Mail Published: September 07, 2009

Families who recycle their rubbish properly will be awarded prizes, including shopping vouchers, under a new council pilot scheme to improve rules over bin collection.

Many councils up and down the country will punish families who break rubbish collection rules, such as leaving their bins out on the wrong day or placing items in the wrong coloured wheelie bin.

But instead of targeting people who break the rules with penalties, one council has come up with the novel idea of rewarding those who follow rubbish collection guidelines correctly.

Points for waste : The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead will reward residents who recycle correctly in the pilot (PHOTO: DAILY MAIL)

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (RBWM) has launched the country's first rubbish reward scheme, which will give shopping vouchers to residents who recycle enthusiastically.

The new scheme is being tried as a six-month pilot at 3,750 homes across the borough, with extra points available for anyone who signs up for extra recycling before Christmas.

It's the first time the American scheme has been used in the UK to cover materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal.

The best recyclers will win points towards a maximum £130 a year in vouchers for goods and meals at local shops and restaurants, including Marks & Spencer.

The project, run by the Queen's local council in Windsor, will cost council taxpayers nothing because private sector sponsors will donate the shopping incentives.

Windsor and Maidenhead currently operates a twin-stream recycling system - separating glass and plastics from fibres.

But households in the pilot areas of Ascot, Windsor and Maidenhead have been issued with a new 240-litre blue bin to allow all material to be collected.

It means relief for householders struggling with complex recycling rules, as under the new system they can put all their recycled waste in one blue bin rather than several different boxes for different kinds of rubbish.

Households that recycle well will be offered M&S shopping vouchers (PHOTO: DAILY MAIL)

Residents will be asked to use the blue bin for all their recycling - cans, glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles and paper - and start earning rewards.

Households will be paid on a points per kilogram basis, with the council saying 'the more you recycle, the more you earn'.

Microchips have been installed on wheelie bins distributed to 3,800 homes participating in the pilot.

The bins will be scanned and weighed automatically as they are emptied into refuse trucks.

Borough leaders said they believed residents preferred the 'points-mean-prizes' incentives to fines and surveillance by bin police.

Conservative councillor Liam Maxwell, a Lead Member for Policy and Performance at RBWM, said: 'We are making recycling much easier and rewarding our residents to maximise participation and reduce landfill.

'The appetite to recycle more is clearly there and using the carrot, not the stick, is our way of energising the community and bringing meaningful benefits to households and local businesses.

'We are proud to be the first in the UK and hope that other local authorities will follow our approach across the country.'

Marks & Spencer is offering £5 off £25 worth of food to householders who collect 150 recycling points from the council, and £5 off £35 worth of clothing or other goods to anyone with 130 points.

Happy shoppers: Recyclers will be able to redeem their vouchers at M&S (PHOTO: DAILY MAIL)

The mixed material collected from the pilot will be sent to rubbish contractor Veolia's materials recycling facility at Rainham in Essex to be sorted.

Ian Williamson, regional director of Veolia, said: 'Anything that rewards people for recycling and driving waste from landfill is obviously beneficial, so to be involved in this makes us extremely proud.

'From an operator's point of view the first roll-out went really, really well and we are looking forward to rolling this out.'

The council launched the scheme as a phase of a two-part scheme to improve recycling in the borough.

The latest phase comes just two weeks after Halton borough council in Cheshire announced it would also be running a six-month trial of the American rewards-based system for dry recyclables from October this year

The first phase of the RecycleBank trial which was launched in Windsor and Maidenhead on June 1 saw half of all eligible residents sign up to receive rewards based on the amount of green waste they recycled at the kerbside.

The first homes selected for tests in June won an average of £20 in vouchers in the first two months. The voucher limit for any one household will be set at £130 a year.

Matthew Tucker, of the American RecycleBank firm which has introduced the scheme based on its incentive projects in the U.S., has backed the scheme to work well over here.

He said: 'It is a scheme which is easy and rewarding for councils and residents.'


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