Zero Waste by Robin Murray, Greenpeace Environmental Trust 2002

• support groups. Many recycling programmes have
been organised with a supporters network, which acts
as a point of advocacy and feedback from the street.
Its views, along with those of the collectors and the
customary focus groups, are important in assessing
and expanding the service.
These approaches take one beyond a common view that
only a minority of the population will engage in recycling,
and that the issue is one of educating an ill-informed
public. There are issues of information and education, but
the lessons of environmental and ethical business are that
a service like recycling must always present itself as both
householder-friendly and a bearer of meaning. Like Oliver
Cromwell, it must trust in God and keep its powder dry.
7. User pay and paying the user
The substance and quality of a service is more important
for many householders than the relative ‘effort price’ of
recycling. Yet many of the high performing programmes
internationally have introduced user pay systems (‘pay as
you throw’) for residual waste and/or some form of
compulsory regulation. The advice of programme
designers is to ensure that convenient systems are in place
before introducing user pay or prohibitions, since it will
otherwise lead to increased fly-tipping or free loading on
others. Carefully introduced user pay (whether or not
supported by regulation) shifts the form of payment for
waste from a lump sum tax charge to a per-unit fee, and
increases participation and capture rates by 10-15%.
There are some restrictions on the introduction of user
charges in the UK, since local authorities are required
under the Environmental Protection Act of 1990 to
provide a free waste collection service. Paradoxically, this
encourages a broader view of incentives than a simple
mixed-waste user fee.
There are a number of ways in which a local authority in
the UK can change the ‘price’ of recycling relative to the
residual dustbin, in addition to the aspects of service
quality outlined above. It can:
• charge for the provision of sacks or other containers
(thus some authorities make a charge for plastic sacks
for residual waste, but provide recycling and
composting containers free. In North America
householders are often charged different annual rates
according to the residual bin size that they agree to use
– a similar effect can be achieved by using the
instruments legally open to local authorities in the
UK);
• charge for collecting green waste and bulky goods;
• raise the level of annual charge for waste services and
provide discounts for those households which join a
recycling scheme (the discounts can be financial or in
kind – a pilot of this kind is currently underway in the
London Borough of Brent);
• introduce the Australian tag bag system and organise a
prize draw for recycling. Each recycling bag is secure
with a tag that carries a bar code on it. There is a
weekly draw, the winner’s bag is then checked, and if
it is properly sorted, he or she receives substantial
prizes – holidays to the Caribbean, a new low-emission
car and so on. The savings resulting from introducing
the scheme are shared with householders in this way;
• other forms of incentives along similar lines include
free or subsidised goods and services for regular
recyclers (water butts or extra composters for example,
compost that can be collected free on certain days of
the year, free energy saving advice, access to discounts
on environmentally friendly goods negotiated on a
bulk basis by the local authority, street/estate/village
awards for good recyclers);
• many authorities in the UK and continental Europe
have introduced town cards that act as a tool for
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