In 2007, in England, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published WasteStrategy 2007 for England. To help drive the required behaviour change for increased sustainable practice the Government in England signalled up in the Strategy the intention to launch a Zero Waste Places (ZWP) initiative to develop innovative and exemplary practice. By inviting places (including cities, towns and rural communities) to bid for ZWP status, the successful applicants were then expected to become
exemplars of good environmental practice on all waste issues. The ZWP programme commenced in October 2008 with the selection of 6 distinct places based upon an application by a partnership containing a Local Authority or in one case a Regional Development Agency. The places ranged in size from the very small (one street of 201 properties) to a Region of England (5 million population). These 6 were chosen from an initial list of 12 applicants via a rigorous selection process against fixed criteria that were
designed to support Zero Waste practice. The funding was £70,258 and the mean was £11,709. The overall
assessment suggests that the Local Authorities and their project partners rose to the challenge of zero
waste and in most cases met or even exceeded their objectives (meeting at least 80% of aims and planned
actions) and achieved high value for money in terms of Government funded initiatives. Evaluation suggested
that there is a requirement to link, in the future, ZWP initiatives with other recent developments
such as Transition Towns, Eco-Town and Total Place developments within Local Authorities. A Certificated
Standard for ZWP was developed and is perceived as being both useful and valuable and it is hoped
that it will spur a large number of new ZWP applications