The John Lewis Partnership is exploring a pay-by-weight model for its waste collection activities in a bid to gather more accurate data that will inform its sustainability strategy.
Whilst virtually everything else in the world of waste management has changed over the last decade, the payment model used for the collection of commercial waste has hardly altered at all. So, unlike most of Europe, which has moved over to a ‘pay as you throw’ model, the UK has been resistant to change from the established ‘flat rate per bin’ payment method.
However, there are now a growing number of waste management companies who see a number of distinct advantages to a more variable approach to pricing which, in turn, are encouraging waste producers to rethink their business model. One such company is the John Lewis Partnership, who is already exploring how, with the help of one of their main waste contractors, Simply Waste Solutions, to turn this from concept into a reality.
According to Mike Walters, the Partnership’s Manager, Waste & Water Resource “This could just be the catalyst to help us further reduce the amount of waste we produce whilst at the same time achieving even greater levels of recycling. There would then be a clear incentive for us to throw less and, if we become even more mindful of what we put in our bins, we could even reduce our overall operational costs”.
Over the course of the last three years, Simply Waste has been working closely with the Partnership to help it achieve its waste targets. It has also been making great strides in providing the John Lewis Partnership with robust management data, since according to Mike Walters, “As soon as you can start measuring waste you can then begin to influence and reduce it”.
The growing demand for even greater levels of management data from its customers has now prompted Simply Waste to invest in new systems and technology that will provide even more transparency to those clients wanting to reach the next level of waste reduction. In August of this year, Simply Waste and MOBA Mobile Automation teamed up to introduce, for the first time on commercial waste vehicles in the UK, the most sophisticated on-board weighing and bin identification solution currently available in the market place.
MOBA, the European market leader in control and measuring systems for construction machinery and waste vehicles, has begun implementing its sophisticated vibrating-wire technology across Simply Waste’s fleet which will deliver extremely accurate weighing measurements together with immunity from interference and electronic signal processing.
And together with bin identification technology and integrated telematics data, Simply Waste is now able to provide customers with exact data on the time and location of the bin that was lifted but also its weight. For those customers with multiple sites an average weight across all bins collected could be levied but the transparency will bring into sharp focus those sites are creating excessive amounts of waste or not doing enough to segregate recyclables.
James Capel, MD of Simply Waste Solutions, “The investment we are now making into both our vehicle fleet and back-office systems will enable our customers to transform the way they behave about waste. It will provide them a direct incentive to cut waste streams across the whole of their business because if they are able to throw less, they will pay less”.
To view the media coverage on this go to Edie.net, Retail Times and MRW.
