posted by Graham Simmonds, Managing Director

When setting up Green Rewards, it was always part of our founding vision to develop a reward programme that would help drive positive change in how we deal with rubbish, as well as other sustainable behaviours. It’s therefore very exciting for me and the team here at Green Rewards to see our first household recycling incentive scheme go live this week in Bexley; click here to find out more about Local Green Points; alternatively, see how the scheme is working in Bexley.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, I’ve become a bit of a self-confessed waste nerd and all the stats I’ve come across point to the fact that we throw out far too much stuff in the UK, with too much of it ending up in landfill sites.  Burying rubbish in big holes in the ground is not only unsustainable environmentally – landfill sites emit large amounts of CO2 and methane emissions as well as scarring the landscape – it’s also unsustainable financially. However it’s not all bad news and in the last decade household recycling in the UK has increased from 12% to 39% which has resulted in huge environmental and financial savings. The challenge now is how to keep pushing up the rate of recycling, and reduce the amount of waste disposal. The Government’s Waste Review published in June favoured ‘carrots’ over ‘sticks’ and it’s very encouraging that Defra has introduced a new Household Reward and Recognition Scheme to help councils introduce incentive schemes.

Our first scheme in this space, London Green Points – Bexley, is all about supporting the local community. It rewards households by providing participants with a wide range of discounts and special offers provided by shops, cafes and other local businesses on a High Street near them; in addition households earn Green Points based on the waste performance in their area which they can either put towards something for themselves or donate to three shortlisted local charity projects that have been selected by a Community Leaders Panel.

We have steered away from measuring waste at the household level favouring measurement for neighbourhoods partly because it is logistically much easier (eg I live in an urban flat and outside my block the bins are not designated to specific flats); partly because this seems fairer (my mum lives alone but recycles diligently so are her efforts worth any less than a family of four?); and partly because measuring by neighbourhoods is a great way to help build community cohesion and local ‘ownership’.

I am hopeful that households will respond positively to our mix of personal and community rewards, all based on the collective waste performance achieved in their neighbourhood. Certainly for me, all my experience as an environmentalist and a community activist points towards a growing ‘localism’; I believe all of us genuinely want to do something practical to help our local area, although all too often time makes this difficult, and I am hopeful that Local Green Points will make a tangible contribution to cutting waste and strengthening local communities.