There are a number of existing tools and benefits calculators which can be used to predict and monitor the impact of waste prevention activities. The tools use different information and methodologies to generate the results. Some offer a predictive indication of the potential impact of a service or activity to inform decision making whilst some will provide a retrospective impact based on activity information. The most appropriate tool for a local authority will depend on their specific monitoring and evaluation needs.
Benefits of Re-use tool WRAP’s Benefits of Re-use tool provides an estimate of the environmental and economic impacts of re-using selected products in the UK. The tool is aimed at re-use organisations and local authorities who want to estimate the wider environmental and economic impacts relating to their existing activities, and those considering initiating or expanding re-use activities who want to understand what some of the impacts could be.
Resource Community Impacts Tool Resource Futures’ Resource Community Impacts Tool - or ResourceCIT for short, is a monitoring tool which estimates the effect that local authority programmes or community facing activities and interventions have on waste, energy, carbon and cost reductions. Estimating this impact is important to both local authorities and community groups, both of which can be involved in organising the activities.
The tool allows local authorities to monitor and indicate the impact community action can have when supported financially and strategically. It can be used by groups and local authorities to validate their activities and future plans, provide a feedback mechanism to monitor their progress, and inform recommendations about the effectiveness of certain activities on specific outcomes, allowing groups with limited resources to focus their work.
In addition, the tool generates return on investment (ROI), figures for the activities undertaken. The impact is then reported against a set of pre-selected impact parameters including waste tonnage prevented; waste tonnage diverted from landfill; carbon tonnage avoided; cost savings to the local authority; cost savings to residents, and return on investment.
Waste Prevention Benefits Calculator The Waste Prevention Benefits Calculator (WPBC), is a collaborative project, led by Environmental Resources Management (ERM), of more than 15 local authorities with Defra and WRAP to develop a practical tool to enable local authorities to evaluate the costs and benefits of waste prevention initiatives in their local context. The WPBC calculates metrics to quantify the benefits of waste prevention in terms of tonnage, cost to the local authority, GHG emissions and social impacts. Social impacts include changes in paid/volunteer employment (FTE/year), and monetary savings for households (£/year).
The WPBC enables local authorities to assess the impact of their waste prevention schemes by comparing the management of a baseline waste arising and the management in a waste prevention scenario where waste prevention . initiatives have been implemented in an area. Bespoke reduction scenarios can be developed by the local authority, based on data they have collected, or they can select from a number of default waste prevention schemes, which have been developed from research covering the UK and Europe. Default waste prevention schemes cover: textiles, food, waste electricals, furniture, and home composting. For more information please contact donald.reid@erm.com
Waste Prevention toolkit
Eunomia’s free Waste Prevention Toolkit allows Local Authorities, Third Sector Organisations and Public Bodies to determine the waste prevention effects, environmental impacts and associated costs of 10 pre-defined waste prevention initiatives such as Home Composting, Love Food/Hate Waste and Re-useable Nappies. In addition three of your own initiatives can also be modelled. The tool is an Excel based standalone model which is easy to use and comes with free technical support and free updates. It can be used to help make the case for and plan waste prevention initiatives and to compare the impacts of different initiatives against each other.