Rubbish... £1.4million wasted on recycling reward scheme

A SCHEME to reward people for recycling has failed to significantly reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill, a study found.

The Government earmarked £1.4million of taxpayers’ money to help councils and community groups run “reward and recognise” pilot schemes in England between 2011 and 2014.

It cost an average of £470 per participant to run 31 schemes across the country and in some cases expenditure outweighed savings.

Rewards offered included shopping vouchers, cash prize draws, craft workshops for children and access to council leisure facilities and in one case a student contest was held to see which university hall could recycle most.

The three-year, £181,000 study for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by consultancy Brook Lyndhurst found some increases in recycling and reuse of products – but these tended to be linked to better services and information about recycling rather than rewards.

Overall, there was “no sea change” in the amount of recycling or in the number of people who recycled.

The schemes were complex and expensive to run and seemed to cost more than savings made, for example from lowering the tax councils had to pay to dump waste in landfill.

Dia Chakravarty of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “This is another example of schemes costing taxpayers a fortune without delivering significant results.

Struggling

“When hard-pressed families are struggling with rising bills, authorities must do better to ensure value for money when approving funding for these schemes.

“Every penny wasted like this is a penny taken away from essential services like flood prevention.” A Defra spokesman said: “Recycling and making the best use of our resources are important for both the environment and our economy.

“We have made great progress in improving recycling rates over the last decade and it is right we investigate ways to improve this further.”

Recycling rates in England have levelled off in recent years at around 45 per cent of the amount of waste households generate – slightly below the European Union’s target of 50 per cent by 2020.

Some councils recycle as much as two thirds of domestic rubbish and others as little as a fifth.