Councils should set up waste-reduction goals with local neighbourhoods rewarded for cutting down on their overall levels of non-recycable waste, according to a new report by the New Local Government Network.

The NLGN says individual financial incentives to increase recycling would be ineffective, arguing that rewards of no more than £30 a year were unlikely to alter behaviour.

Instead, a recycling-incentive scheme would be more effective if councils looked to a community-wide approach. ‘Rather than monitor personal waste, councils and their partners should calculate, publish and distribute ward-level recycling rates,’ the report states.

‘An incentive could then be distributed to those wards that show the greatest improvements.’ Residents would then spend the money on their own priorities, such as refurbishing a local park or improving community safety measures. Such a scheme would be simpler to monitor and measure and would create fewer unwanted side effects, such as fly-tipping, the report argues.

Furthermore, it would use social pressure to drive competition. In contrast, a charging system ‘in its current consultation form’ (Surveyor, 31 May 2007) could only hope to raise the profile of the recycling agenda, and was ‘unlikely to be sufficient to change public behaviour, significantly increase recycling or deliver a long-term solution to the waste problem’.

Furthermore, the charging debates might encourage authorities to avoid more difficult decisions around long-term technologies and waste structure investment. But encouraging public involvement would reduce public opposition to alternative waste-infrastructure investments.

‘Local waste strategies should place greater emphasis on public involvements, consultation and awareness raising,’ the report concludes.

How can we refuse? Tackling the waste challenge