Recycling scheme to include all Royal Borough
4:14pm Tue 30th Mar 10:: written by Kelly Rawlings
A scheme which rewards residents for recycling is to be rolled out across the borough from July.
It follows a successful pilot of the RecycleBank scheme last year involving more than 6,500 households.
The pioneering scheme allows residents to earn up to £135 in 'rewards' a year, such as discounts and offers at local shops, attractions, cafés and restaurants.
The amount recycled in participating households has gone up at least 35 per cent since the pilot scheme began.
The cabinet has now approved the roll-out of the scheme to 60,000 homes across the borough.
It is a 'major breakthrough', according to Cllr Liam Maxwell, cabinet member for policy and performance.
He said: “We have demonstrated that incentives help change behaviour. Incentives – not penalties – are the way forward and councils in other parts of the country are following the Royal Borough’s lead as they look for ways of helping residents change the way they dispose of waste and increase their recycling.
“The beauty of the rewards programme is that everyone wins – residents, local businesses, the council and, importantly, our environment.”
Blue wheelie bins will be delivered to homes simplifying the recycling process. Cans, paper, glass and plastic bottles can all be placed in the same bin, rather than the current system of separating items into coloured boxes.
The weight of the recycled items is measured by electronic tags on the bins which are read by recording equipment in the collection vehicles.
Read more in this week's Advertiser.
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- How will this scheme work with those that have communal recycling bins? Where possible, we recycle, but we know that a lot of other people don't. Would all the households receive a portion of the vouchers, which would make it unfair for those that do recycle, as those that don’t recycle are still being rewarded? Also if those with communal bins are not included in this scheme, we would be less likely to recycle our waste as we will not have any incentive.
- i cannot see the point of giving discount vouchers this means you have spend to receive hardly a saving, also what is there in maidenhead to shop for.surely the biggest incentive would be to discount the council tax by doing this the more you recycle the the larger your discount.
- OK, but what if I intentionally avoid buying products with lots of packaging, or don’t drink lots of bottles of wine, will I loose out on "rewards"? Weighing waste is draconian; what next, weighing sewage!
- Finally a great incentive for residents, i completely agree with it and i'm sure over time it will get rolled out to the rest of the country. Well done Windsor and Maidenhead!
- I am disappointed by some of the comments below regarding people missing out on incentives with communal bins, or because they make the choice to buy products with less packaging. At the end of the day, recycling is to help reuse some of the masses of waste households produce and would otherwise go to landfill. The scheme isn't some cash earner to encourage us to make more waste but a bonus to people who are doing something they should do in the first place.
- This is the carrot, the stick will come later.
- about time to i am an avid recycler and have been missing out all this time. after all where dose the money come from to pay for theses bins? thats right our council tax so we have all been paying for the trial when it only involved a few thounsand propertys bring it on i want my blue bin NOW
- Good stuff, and can't wait to get my new bin. A shame that the paper and glass will be cross-contaminated by having a single stream collection which reduces the recovery value - but presumably Veolia MRFs are able to cope with that...
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