When local authority recycling targets were introduced in the early Noughties, the pressure was on to divert as much waste from landfill as possible. Many councils took the decision to boost their recycling rates by separately collecting garden waste. This seemingly simple step could greatly increase capture from households, up to 200 kilogrammes (kg) a year in some local authorities, and money from Defra made a free green waste collection service look like an easy win.

“Local authorities took money from the government to buy wheelie bins, gave people the bins, told people to put garden waste in it and collected it for free. And guess what? Their recycling rates went up dramatically”, says Andy Bond of 4R Environmental, adding: “But in the process they created new waste arisings that didn’t used to appear in the system at all.”

Now, the wisdom of offering a free collection looks increasingly doubtful. Research conducted by Resource finds that there are significant differences in the amounts of waste collected between local authorities offering free collections and those offering charged services.

Studying the WasteDataFlow reporting for England for 2010/11, Resource has found that waste collection authorities (WCAs) offering a charged service for green waste collected on average 799 kg per household (total waste arisings), while those offering a free collection picked up an average of 880 kg of waste a year, 9.1 per cent more. For WCAs, this equates to picking up an extra 11,000 tonnes of material a year on average.

For unitary authorities (UAs), the difference is smaller; on average, charging for green waste collection results in household waste arisings that are 33 kg lower than those offering a free service. As they typically serve a larger number of households, though, this still equates to an average of 8,500 extra tonnes of garden waste per authority. Part of the explanation for the smaller difference between charged and free UA garden waste services may be that UAs are generally more urban and therefore have fewer, smaller gardens. Also, figures for UAs include civic amenity and bring site tonnages, which offer householders a free disposal route (not accounting for petrol and labour), so inevitably some garden waste will be diverted this way.

We found those councils (whether WCAs or UAs) offering a fixed levy for garden waste collection – a green waste bin – charge an average of £38 for a year’s collection, and that when a garden waste service is charged for through the individual purchase of plastic sacks or bags, the drop in waste arisings when compared with a free collection service is even starker.

The rush to improve recycling rates has resulted in two-thirds of local authorities now operating a free garden waste collection service, consequently paying to deal with waste that could be managed by householders through home composting. Considering the extra emissions associated with collecting this extra tonnage, as well as the muddled behavioural incentives, the case for a free green waste service is becoming much less attractive than it was in the heady days of the early Noughties.

However, the main issue for councils is undoubtedly the cost of providing the collection. Although it varies between districts it is certainly possible to run a
paid-for service that covers costs; South Norfolk is just one example. The council provides a fortnightly collection service using two vehicles to serve 14,500 households in the district, 25 per cent of the total. This is estimated to cost the council in the region of £55 per household. A £39 per annum subscription fee raises £565,000, and an extra £245,000 of recycling credits is paid on the 5,000 tonnes of garden waste by the waste disposal authority, Norfolk County Council. Waste Reduction Officer Lisa Fountain comments: “The service just about covers cost, but it depends, if it gets much bigger we’ll need another vehicle for another collection round.”

But if a council offers the service for free, an unfortunate side effect is that even those without gardens pay for it. Dave Brinton, Waste Initiatives and Prevention Officer for Lewisham explains this is part of the reason it charges for green waste collection: “It might be considered unfair that the generally more wealthy people in the borough who have gardens have their collection service subsidised by everyone else.”

What’s more, offering a green waste collection for all can be very inefficient. “There are a lot of people who will only put a few dead flowers in their bins, but we have to resource the service regardless of what’s out there, anticipating that potentially everyone will have a full bin out even though that’s never been the case”, says Julie Evans, Waste Strategy Manager for North Tyneside Council, which is switching to a service with a £20 subscription charge next year.

The council is expecting around 40 per cent of households to drop out of the service. “What we think will happen is that the participants with the big gardens who really value this service will be happy to pay the subscription charge, and all these people who just put a little bit out but still expect it to be emptied will drop out, so it probably won’t affect the tonnage adversely. The savings we’ll make are from dropping rounds, dropping vehicles and staff, because the £20 charge doesn’t really cover costs.”

Some councils have decided to make the switch to a charged service, often as a result of shrinking budgets from central government, but there are others who feel trapped by a need to preserve the status quo and so believe they’re stuck offering the service for free. The issue revolves around public opinion: once householders are used to what they perceive to be a free service, they are loath to begin paying for it.

Another barrier to switching to a charged service are the practicalities involved. “We think the logistics of trying to levy a charge and how that would work would be so bureaucratic that it probably wouldn’t be of any real benefit to us”, says Steve Reynolds, Environment and Countryside Manager for Scarborough Borough Council. “You can’t quantify how many customers you will lose. If half of them said they want to stay on and pay, that’s 26,000 people we need to charge somehow.

“Basically a lot of people would think ‘Oh, I’m not going to bother with this’ and the material would then end up in the residual waste bin, which is what we want to avoid in the first place. So then we would lose the benefit of recycling garden waste and our tonnage of residual waste would go up. So it makes no sense to start charging for garden waste in my view.”

Although the benefits of switching to a charged service are identifiable, it appears making the change is a challenging proposition. The sheer logistics of it, public and political pressure, existing contracts with collection and disposal companies, the issue of what to do with food waste for those councils that collect all organic waste together and the relationship between garden size, affluence and housing density to the cost per tonne of garden waste collected, combine to make this a complex problem.

“Clearly there are councils that are starting to move away from free services because they can’t sustain the costs of them. Frankly, that’s probably a good thing”, says Andy Bond. “I would always advocate a charged collection on the basis that you will end up with less waste in your system.”

In this age of austerity, councils across the country will be looking to make savings, and garden waste can be a good place to start. Although it may be difficult to switch to a charged collection, ultimately, if councils want to reduce the amount of waste they collect and encourage individuals to become more responsible for their own waste, the evidence suggests this step will help. The more waste you collect, the more you have to pay to do it. With garden waste, it really is a question of reaping what you sow.