Kerbside Recycling: Indicative Cost and Performance

In 2008, WRAP published Kerbside Recycling: Indicative Costs and Performance (ICP) which provided a systematic appraisal of the characteristics of the principal kerbside recycling collection systems looking at both their cost and effectiveness. The outputs from that project have been widely used.

The continued use of those outputs by Local Authorities, the development of new types of recycling services, combined with improved knowledge around scheme performance and costs, resulted in a need to update the project (ICP2).

The aim of the update is to produce a series of benchmark costs and standard operational data, through service modelling, that local authorities can use when evaluating their current recycling service and considering service changes. The resultant benchmarks are based on the performance (yields of food and dry recycling) and cost of a modelled good practice system operated across a range of geographical areas.

The online tool takes the operational outputs and collection costs from the ICP2 modelling and allows user to localise the outputs by applying their own gate fees, bulking costs, disposal costs and material revenues to produce an overall scenario cost. The results for the localised scenarios are displayed in a table and a graph.