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The thing that we really like about this is that it treats
the public like adults, it shows the citizen some respect.
It's not about fining people, it's not about bin policeman,
it's about saying if you recycle and if you're prepared to take the trouble
to recycle then we will ensure, or Windsor and Maidenhead will ensure
that you get something back - something to spend in local shops,
something to spend to put back into the economy.
This is I think the future of the way in which we want to tackle recycling
and the really important thing about this is that while this particular initiative
does use chips in bins, it's entirely voluntary.
If you don't want to participate, you don't need to participate.
Well we're here at the launch of the RecycleBank and Windsor and Maidenhead
pay the public to recycle scheme. We've had a 6,000 household pilot
which has gone really well, we've increased recycling by 35% and we're now looking to
roll this out across the Borough to every house so every house can benefit from
the rewards which are numerous quantites of rewards in local businesses and also
to benefit from being able to recycle more effectively and easily across the Borough.
So we think it's a great scheme, it's really worked in the pilot and we're really pleased
two Secretaries of State here at the launch to help us get this off to a flying start.
Well i'm really pleased to be here today at the launch of RecycleBank
incentive based recycling for the Royal Borough. It gives residents the opportunity
to earn rewards for their recycling, encouraging good behaviour -
the carrot not the stick approach. We've had Eric Pickles and Caroline Spellman
here today, it's been a really successful launch.
At RecycleBank we applied Windsor and Maidenhead for taking the
environmental leadership of introducing RecycleBank to the U.K.
At RecycleBank we're unique in the fact that we offer rewards for recycling
and in giving rewards for recycling we make recycling a lot more fun.
The reward partners in the programme are Marks & Spencer,
local leisure centres, coffee shops and of course the donations in the programme
really encourage residents to recycle more often and in this fun manner
with these great reward partners.
We thought that penalty schemes were just not the way to go they'd be
about as popular as parking tickets. So therefore we were pleased to of identified RecycleBank's
activities of the US, seen them, talked to their customers
and started introducing it to our customers over here.
Very pleased that Windsor and Maidenhead were the first client to go forward with this,
They're a forward thinking customer for us and were willing to take the risk of being first.
I think that the trial has demonstrated that the risk has payed off.
It's operated seamlessly due to partnership flexibility
amongst all the partners including RecycleBank, Veolia and of course the Council themselves.
I think this is an absolutely fantastic scheme. It's got two aspects to it from
my perspective as the locally elected MP - number one is it restores my faith
in elected representatives because they've really made a difference here by
incentivising people to recycle. Not only are they giving rewards to those individuals
and helping local businesses to prosper, but what they've also done is they're reducing
the Council Tax by reducing the land fill for everybody else. Now this is a fantastic scheme,
Windsor has shown great leadership and i'm proud to be associated with the Council.
We're very supportive of what's going on in Windsor and Maidenhead and we support
the scheme because we really want to incentivise customers to recycle more.
Food packaging is extremely important to us to guarentee the freshness and quality of our products
but we've also reduced the amount of food packaging by 20% in the last 3 years and now the
trick is to really drive the recycling rate and what's fantastic for Windsor and Maidenhead
is the waste that's recycled here is taken back to a recycling plant in Dagenham
and we remake that into milk bottles and into salad packs.
So whatever you recycle in Windsor and Maidenhead comes straight back round
into new food packaging.