ABSTRACT
CONTENTS 13.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 299 13.2 Research Methodology........................................................................... 300 13.3 Results....................................................................................................... 306 13.4 Conclusions.............................................................................................. 309 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................. 310 References ........................................................................................................... 310
Following the publication of the Waste Strategy 2000 and its associated performance targets (DETR and National Assembly for Wales, 2000), there is presently particular interest among local authorities in improving their household waste recycling rates. The government has set a national household waste and composting target of 25% by 2005-2006, to be met through the cumulative effect of individual statutory targets for each local authority (Cabinet Office Strategy Unit, 2002). Many authorities have introduced kerbside collections of recyclables or established facilities at Civic Amenity (CA) sites, smaller neighborhood recycling centers, or supermarkets where households can deposit materials such as glass, paper, or cans. The form and extent of such recycling infrastructure provision varies greatly between local authorities (Parfitt et al., 2001; Community Recycling Network, 2002), and it is not straightforward to assess the effectiveness of different initiatives. Partly this is because recycling rates also tend to differ according to the socioeconomic characteristics of the population involved (e.g., Tucker et al., 1998; Perrin and Barton, 2001; Barr, 2002; EnCams, 2002), but there are additional difficulties arising from the need to examine the interaction between the recycling scheme and use of other household waste stream
outlets such as conventional house-to-house refuse vehicle collections. A further complication is that operational weight data often relates to a diversity of zones (including collection rounds or catchment areas of different sizes around ‘‘bring’’ sites), so making the task of reconstructing the household waste stream and linking such information to defined populations a challenging one. Geographical information systems (GIS) can make a significant contribu-
tion to the problems of evaluating recycling strategies because of their ability to integrate data from operational entities such as CA sites or refuse collection rounds with details of the population resident in particular locations (Lovett, 2000). This capacity to link data sources based on geographical position, coupled with the means to calculate additional information such as accessibility measures or catchment boundaries, in turn permits the reconstruction of waste stream characteristics at the local scale. To illustrate the potential for enhancing waste management and planning through the use of GIS, a research project was carried out in one local authority (South Norfolk Council) to link subdistrict operational data (from both collection round and site-based sources) with population details. This database was then used to predict the impact of several possible new schemes for improving recycling performance and assess the extent to which they would help the authority meet their recycling targets for 2005-2006.
