Understanding Waste Growth at Local Authority Level

Research was undertaken for Defra to provide a more informed understanding of the factors that influence growth in household waste through the investigation of the findings from a set of detailed case studies.

Assessing the policy impact

The case studies contrast the situations between different areas, those that have reported falling quantities of waste and those where waste arisings have continued to rise. Whilst the research touched on a number of issues that knowingly affect waste growth, such as changes in lifestyle behaviour, socio-demographic make-up, consumer spending, purchasing trends and product packaging trends, the principle aim of this study was to focus on the effect that local waste policies have in influencing household waste growth.

In total, 28 local authorities were selected and recruited from across the UK, 20 from England, 4 from Wales and 2 from both Scotland and Northern Ireland. The basic rationale used for the selection of the case study local authorities was to:

• Spread the case studies by region, Office of National Statistics (ONS) area type: looking
• at the extent to which demographics might explain trends versus influence of local waste
• policies and other factors (e.g. data collection methods);
• Short-list areas with reasonable time series data for the period 2000/01 to 2007/08;
• Short-list a mix of Waste Collection Authorities (WCAs) and Unitary Authorities.

Going up and coming down

In total, 14 local authorities broadly exhibited growth in household waste arisings while 14 demonstrated a decrease.  It is important to note that this classification was based on overall household waste trends during the time series and not individual average yields per resident or per household. The data gathered for the study were largely collected through the completion of ‘Information Capture Templates’ that covered:

• Total waste arisings and waste arisings per household;
• Changes to collection waste infrastructure and associated policies;
• Key annual demographic changes;
• Locally held municipal waste statistics;
• Changes in waste statistics reporting procedures;
• Evidence of changes in the size and management of other non-household waste streams;
• Information available on local trends from the earlier period 1995/06-2000/01.

The completion of the templates was complemented by visits to each of the 28 case study authorities. The consolidation and subsequent analysis of this information has led to some interesting findings which can be found in the full report on the to download click here