The Government recognises that progress with increasing recycling has been in the right direction but wants to go further and faster in terms of driving up recycling rates and reducing the amount of waste for disposal.

The Government believes that it is better to reward householders for doing the right thing with their waste than to penalise them for doing the wrong thing. We are therefore encouraging councils to reward people who recycle or re-use their waste. We believe that reward and recognition can motivate people to take action.

Rewards could include financial rewards, e.g. vouchers, donations to charities, cash or discounts on goods and services. Recognition could, for instance, include personalised feedback about how much a household has recycled, or a letter about how donating an item for reuse has helped the local community.

The Reward and Recognition scheme

We want to explore ways to reward or recognise people for adopting positive behaviours towards managing their waste. As part of the Waste Review*, Defra launched the Reward and Recognition scheme in  June 2011, making approximately £500,000 available for 2011/12 to local authorities and community organisations to introduce or trial new schemes that reward or recognise people or communities for adopting such positive behaviours.

The closing date for applications was 26 July 2011 and we received 70 applications. We undertook a robust sifting exercise. Applications were assessed by a Funding Panel** using published criteria which included project design and delivery, estimated net financial cost of achieving the anticipated benefits, strength of business model for the scheme to be self-financing once government funding ceases, and contribution to evidence base.  The Funding Panel agreed that 16 schemes warranted funding, with total support of just over £475,000.

• Table of successful applicants (PDF 90KB)

Some of these schemes will, by necessity, be innovative and go beyond the tried and tested, but we firmly believe that this will help local communities to develop solutions that work for them. We know there was some press coverage in October 2011 about a few of the schemes we will be funding and we will be very interested to see how well these, and indeed all the, schemes work. We are very keen to learn lessons from the schemes we are funding and that these be shared with other organisations.

We want to ensure that lessons learned from these schemes can be shared with other organisations. Further funding may be available for 2012/13 and 2013/14. Details will be put on the Defra web pages and possibly in the media.

*The Household Reward & Recognition Fund for Recycling & Reuse is part of the Action Plan of the Waste Review and is part of Defra’s waste strategy.

**Consisting of policy and specialist representatives from Defra, Waste and Resources Action Programme, DCLG and Improvement and Efficiency South East.

Research/Evidence base

By making funding available we want to strengthen the evidence base of the environmental and financial costs and benefits of rewarding householders and to make this information available to local authorities and others to help inform their choices locally. We are keen to discover which approaches work well and offer best value for money and which are not so successful and envisage that schemes would be self sustaining (without central government funding) if they did achieve results that were projected.

We have commissioned research into how reward or recognition schemes have worked in various situations, and how people respond to rewards. This will establish which types of rewards are likely to provide best value for money and will help Local Authorities and other organisations target their schemes most effectively.

Other incentive based schemes

Some schemes already operating are rewarding people for doing the right thing. For example, the London Green Points scheme launched in Bexley in October 2011 or the Recyclebank scheme that operates in Windsor & Maidenhead, Halton and Lambeth are good examples of how people can be rewarded for doing the right thing.