Re-use counts

Government changes mean that re-use tonnages will now count towards council targets.

Even though re-use ranks higher in the waste hierarchy than recycling, it has often been dismissed as 'too difficult to measure', 'difficult to define' or 'insignificant'. Before, there was little incentive for councils to support re-use charities, because re-use was excluded from waste targets.

However, new government guidelines outline how re-use of household materials can now be counted within the Recycling (and composting) Indicator NI 192. It is also included within NI 191 residual waste not re-used, recycled or composted.

Caroline Lee-Smith, Development Officer for the Furniture Re-use Network, says: "For the first time, from this April, local authorities have the power to count tonnages re-used by the voluntary sector. This has been a major obstacle to joint working over the years, as because they couldn't count it, many of our members have been excluded from aligning their services with local authority bulky waste services. Now, including these tonnages could increase the recycling indicator by 0.1 per cent for each average re-use organisation in an area, higher if the organisation runs the council's bulky waste service."

Lee-Smith adds: "This guidance enshrines the rights of re-use organisations to receive credits for both the collections they run, as well as the tonnage they save from disposal routes.  Currently, only a quarter of local authorities in England currently pay disposal re-use credits, while none pay reasonable collection credits. I expect to see many more local authorities engaging with re-use organisations and contributing to the good work they do keeping bulky items from disposal."