Evidence for waste minimisation clubs and business support as interventions to promote waste prevention

The Business Waste Prevention Evidence Review (Project WR1403) is a major Government funded project, in England, to map and collate available evidence on business waste prevention so as to guide future policy development. The total number of reports and documents reviewed was 971. The prime focus of research was the UK with 306 reports, but around one third of the reports (142) were sourced from outside the UK including USA, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Finland as well as OECD and pan-European communities. Some 6 illustrative `sectors` were chosen for review and 8 types of interventions were examined. Central interventions include attitudes and behaviour in business and interventions by external funders as well as approaches taken to waste prevention. The Review has made clear what is known about the success factors for business waste prevention. Despite over 15 years of activity in England in business support for waste prevention, often through Resource Efficiency Clubs (RECs), there are still large gaps in knowledge, about barriers and success factors that require detailed research in areas such as RECs and business support. The Review occurred, in a period of financial constraint and there is a clear need to rationalise business support, via Best Practice Programmes, essentially for cost savings. The funding support for key Best Practice Programmes has been reduced by over 80% and not replaced with anything comparable in scope and size. This is at a time when very significant potential financial savings, from no or low cost resource efficiency actions in businesses, have been made apparent; being up to £55 billion per annum. This Review provides the evidence base required to stimulate new and dynamic approaches to funding business support for waste prevention so as to move towards achieving a high proportion of the potential savings.