Recycling rates on increase in UK

Serco, one of the UK’s leading environmental service providers has published new research investigating the impact of recycling incentives.

The study shows that authorities with recycling incentives schemes recorded an average 8% increase in recycling which was accompanied by a 4% reduction in landfill. 25% of residents said that recycling incentives encourage them to recycle more whilst 75% of them suggest they are already recycling as much as they can.

Serco and Eunomia used the ‘Nearest Neighbour’ concept to establish disposal and recycling trends which benchmarked the performance of the authorities against that of 27 other authorities without reward schemes.

This is the first time that the performance of recycling incentives has been examined by industry professionals and experts.

Robin Davies, business development director of environmental services at Serco said: “In a difficult financial climate, Serco is supporting our local authority partners in harnessing the potential of recycling incentives to help increase recycling rates and thereby keep costs down. This new research provides important information in relation to both the costs and impacts of incentive schemes enabling them to make better decisions.”

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