A Better Way to Recycle: co-operative and community ... - Urbed

5. Engaging consumer co-operative societies in recycling5.2 Current waste management practicesConsumer societies experience significant costsassociated with the disposal of waste. No firmdata is available for how much consumersocieties presently spend on wastemanagement. Dr Robin Kent of Envirowiseestimates that waste costs UK industry at least£15 billion a year or around 4.5 % of totalturnover. Kent says that ‘The total cost of wasteis generally around 20 times the first estimatethat a company makes. Most of these costs arehidden and companies simply do not considerthem when looking at the cost of waste. A firststep in assessing performance is finding the truecost of waste. The 'true cost' of waste is not onlythe cost of the raw materials but is also a functionof how much added value has been put into theproduct before it is lost from the productionprocess.’At present, few businesses recognise the truecost of waste. Studies by Envirowise haveconsistently shown that, on average, the truecost of waste is actually ten times the disposalcost. The rest of the cost arises from inefficientuse of raw materials and energy and fromhaving to handle and store waste.During the course of the research for this report,the NCBS carried out a limited telephone surveyof a number of consumer societies to determinethe scale and cost of their existing wastemanagement arrangements. In addition, theNCBS asked consumer societies if there wereany issues standing in the way of an initiative toeither work with or create their ownco-operative recycling businesses.A range of consumer societies were interviewedin order to identify current costs and wastemanagement strategies. Due to the variety ofsize and activities in the movement, it wasdifficult to establish an average position forwaste disposal costs, or a standard wastemanagement strategy. However, the largestsingle contributor in terms of volume and costof waste disposal was food retail.The survey found that waste disposal costestimates ranged from between less than £3,000to over £900,000 per annum. This large degreeof variation was due to three main factors: thedifferences in trading activities, size and scale,and the accuracy of waste monitoring andaccounting systems used by consumer societies.The survey found that the majority of thoseinterviewed had limited amounts of accuratedata, both in terms of volumes produced andthe cost of disposal. This was a concern in viewof the commitment of the co-operativemovement to monitor and report on KSCPIs,which include a performance indicator based onthe proportion of waste recycled or re-used.Over half of those surveyed will not be able toreport on this performance indicator unless theirmanagement systems are amended.The NCBS survey showed that just 20% ofrespondents could report on waste generationand disposal costs against individual parts of thewaste stream (glass, paper, food, plastic, etc).Only a few consumer societies were able toproduce waste statistics across each retail groupin terms of both tonnage and associateddisposal costs. There was a strong degree ofcorrelation between the sophistication of theenvironmental management system and thelevel of disposal costs reported to the NCBSsurvey. Those that tracked their wasteperformance reported higher disposal costs thanthose that had rudimentary systems; suggestingthat consumer societies with underdevelopedmonitoring systems were underestimating thecost of managing their waste. The survey alsorevealed that although a majority of consumersocieties have been considering options toincrease their amount of recycling, only around30% have given any thought to setting up theirown recycling centres.However, the relatively modest starting point forsome also represents a considerable opportunity.There are a number of reasons why someconsumer societies undervalue waste as apotential asset. Some, in common withprivately-owned businesses, see waste as anoverhead that has to be tolerated. The effort tominimise waste is often perceived as an activitythat will yield fewer benefits compared topaying for the offending material to be removed.This perception is incorrect and often largesavings can be made with very littlemanagement time or front-end investment. Allbusinesses need to appreciate that the true costof waste is more than just the cost of disposal.40The National Centre for Business & Sustainability