Councils – waste & recycling
The UK Government has set some ambitious targets for household waste and recycling: a recycling rate of 55% by 2025 and 65% by 2035. With the UK-wide rate sitting at just under 45% in 2023, with just two more years to go the 2025 target is going to be a very challenging one to meet.
All Councils know the importance of their waste services, both collection and disposal. These services are important to residents - they are used by everyone - but they are also costly to run. Those costs can also be difficult to control, with disposal costs in particular being largely determined by the amount of waste and recycling collected. With recycling of waste being significantly cheaper than disposal to either landfill or energy from waste (EfW) plants, the greater the proportion that is recycled the lower the cost will be of managing the waste. So it is in every Council’s interest to do all they can to increase recycling rates.
Most Councils will already have strategies in place to reduce household waste and increase recycling rates. However, new national policy is likely to change the municipal waste landscape significantly. With the introduction of the Government’s Simpler Recycling reforms, together with a nationwide Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) and new policy on Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (EPR), Councils will need to review how their services will be impacted, and what that impact will be on their finances.
Councils will need a good understanding of where they are now, including:
GreenGoals provides help to councils, so please do get in touch. That could be with things such as:
Contact us if you would like a chat about how GreenGoals can help.
All Councils know the importance of their waste services, both collection and disposal. These services are important to residents - they are used by everyone - but they are also costly to run. Those costs can also be difficult to control, with disposal costs in particular being largely determined by the amount of waste and recycling collected. With recycling of waste being significantly cheaper than disposal to either landfill or energy from waste (EfW) plants, the greater the proportion that is recycled the lower the cost will be of managing the waste. So it is in every Council’s interest to do all they can to increase recycling rates.
Most Councils will already have strategies in place to reduce household waste and increase recycling rates. However, new national policy is likely to change the municipal waste landscape significantly. With the introduction of the Government’s Simpler Recycling reforms, together with a nationwide Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) and new policy on Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (EPR), Councils will need to review how their services will be impacted, and what that impact will be on their finances.
Councils will need a good understanding of where they are now, including:
- how much waste and recycling are we collecting, and how is that broken down between the different waste streams?
- where could we potentially be collecting more recycling, and of which materials?
- how are the forthcoming changes to national policy going to affect our operations, and the cost of running those?
- how are those policy changes likely to affect our recycling rates?
- aside from the national targets for recycling, should we be setting our own targets, and monitoring progress towards those?
- what are the carbon impacts of our waste and recycling services, and what can we do to reduce those?
GreenGoals provides help to councils, so please do get in touch. That could be with things such as:
- evaluating the likely impact of the national policy changes, on both your services and your finances
- improving you data collection and monitoring processes
- analysing your recycling performance to see where that can be improved
- looking at contamination rates to establish how those can be reduced
- reviewing waste composition data and identifying ways in which that can be used to help increase recycling
- ensuring that central Government EPR funding is allocated to waste services
- creating bespoke monitoring reports to help you track progress
Contact us if you would like a chat about how GreenGoals can help.
