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Sack, weight or volume based "waste" prizing systems?

London - The Local Government Association has outlined three schemes which councils in England could find effective in reducing the amount of waste going into landfill.

These models are:

1) Sack based system

In this system, households buy different sized pre-paid sacks or special tags to go on ordinary bin bags from their local authority or possibly local shops, for general household waste. This option is more common in urban areas where space prevents households using wheelie bins. This system provides a very clear incentive to reduce waste. Similar systems already operate successfully in England, for example, for garden waste.

And in Maastricht - Holland

Maastricht is a city with 57,450 households, 60 percent of which are houses and 40 percent are multi-storey buildings or estates. It introduced a sack based system of waste charging in 2000 to deal with the growth in household waste and encourage optimal reuse. Households can purchase 25/50 litre sacks, priced at Euro 0.69/ Euro1.04, which are collected weekly/fortnightly. Following introduction of the system, the total amount of household waste fell dramatically, described as 'like going back in time 10 years' and waste separation increased from 45 percent to 65 percent. Maastricht is now the top municipality in its class for waste separation, provides a service level that is higher than the national average, separates 65 percent of its waste (compared to a national target of 53 percent) and is seeing the financial benefits.

2) Weight based system

In this system, wheelie bins are fitted with chips to allow the bins to be weighed when they are loaded onto the vehicle, much like the system that is currently used for trade waste in the UK. Households are sent a bill (this could be quarterly or even annually) for the amount of non-recyclable waste they throw out. Chips can be fitted to new bins or retro-fitted to existing bins.

Sittard is an authority where just 25 percent of homes are apartments, so they introduced a weight based system for houses in 2002 to reduce waste and increase recycling. They provide houses with a 2-compartment bin for garden waste and residual waste, which they collect weekly. Since introducing the scheme, general waste is down 41 percent and dry recyclables up 23 percent. Sittard estimate the system has resulted in savings of Euro1.1million per year. 

3) Volume based system

In this system households choose from a range of wheelie bin sizes according to the amount of waste they think they will generate, and are charged accordingly. After set periods of time, households can elect to change bin size, although clearly doing this too frequently would result in unreasonable costs.

Source: Local Government Association

Source: www.eu-recycling.com