The Greater Manchester Waste Development Authority – Challenges in Sustainable Waste Management
| Case Code: OPER137 Case Length: 17 Pages Period: 2000-2018 Pub Date: 2019 Teaching Note: Available |
Price: Rs.500 Organization: Greater Manchester Waste Development Authority Industry: Waste Management Countries: United Kingdom Themes: - |
Abstract Case Intro 1 Case Intro 2 Excerpts
Excerpts
A Holistic Policy
Waste prevention was the Authority's trusted weapon against environmental contamination. It believed that waste prevention significantly helped in combating additional waste. The entire vision of the Authority had been articulated into a clear policy draft, comprising several critical objectives. The policy objectives were essentially centered around four key themes....
Creating a Circular Economy
The Authority’s initiatives were centered on the circular economy strategy. It modus operandi encompassing maintenance, repair, reuse, and recycle was designed to contribute to its mission of waste management. The Authority designed its initiatives to bring about a change in the nature, thought process, and behavior of the people. It initiated education and awareness campaigns on the shopping trends and patterns of people. The emphasis was on encouraging them to buy things which were organic, long lasting, bio-degradable, recyclable, and reusable....
Building Sensitivity
The Authority designed several branding and marketing campaigns to deal with the apprehensions people had about second-hand goods through a theme called 'previous loved'. The Authority brought the electronic goods also into the ambit of the second-hand market. It teamed up with the British Standards Institute which had introduced a Publicly Available Specification for Reuse of Used Electrical and Electronic Equipment and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (UEEE and WEEE)....
Ambitious Targets and Aspiring Joint Ventures
The Authority set an ambitious target of 50% waste recycling across Greater Manchester by 2015 and 60% by 2025. A keen focus on quality materials for effective recycling of the waste was brought in as a key practice. According to the Authority, these targets were attainable only through resource efficiency and adequate access to secondary raw materials. Waste was broadly classified into kerb-side waste and household waste. While kerb-side waste was expected to contribute 40% of the recycled waste, the remaining 10% of the target 50%, was from households...
The People Connect
The Authority had the tall objective of reducing Greater Manchester’s landfills by 90% by 2015. This required improving awareness levels among the households and encouraging them to participate in the waste management and reduction process by preventing, reusing, recycling, and recovering wastes. These objectives could be achieved only with the help of various initiatives encompassing among other things, technological initiatives, campaigns, facilities, and infrastructure, awareness. This required the Authority to place people at the heart of its waste management and waste reduction strategy....
Managing Behaviors
Motivating the public to participate in the waste management initiatives was a must to effect the change. The Authority needed to bring about the desired behavioral change that was essential and expected from the people in order to make such a big change initiative a success. While educating the people was one of the ways of making it happen, the Authority had designed a holistic program to bring about the desired behavioral change....
The Waste Hierarchy
Waste hierarchy was a mechanism the Authority had conceptualized and implemented under which various articles were organized through a structured discipline of usage, which made sure that the objects were used to the utmost and diversion to the landfill was minimized. It included various alternatives to disposing of waste and of using landfills, like encouraging second-hand buying, repairing, recycling, conversion into energy forms, etc.....
Sustainable Consumption and Production
The Authority supported businesses to plan and follow sustainable consumption and production strategy, towards reducing, reusing, recycling and recovering waste. As a part of the strategy, the Authority introduced leaner production methods, smarter purchasing methods, and innovative methods to waste recovery. Enworks was the Authority’s official Sustainable Consumption and Production delivery program. This was instituted with four goals:...
Operations
The Authority had effective infrastructure to carry out the change through waste management. It had instilled as many as 20 HWRCs. A dedicated Materials Recovery Facility was meant to sort the kerb-side recyclable materials into various waste categories, from where they would be sent for recycling. By 2012, VLGM had instilled high-end infrastructure with 42 recycling and waste management facilities across 24 locations. The cost of constructing the infrastructure was about £ 640 million...
Communication Strategy
Contamination was one of the biggest challenges that the Authority faced. The Authority had laid down a communication strategy to communicate the change program about waste management. It designed the communication strategy in numerous formats. The communication strategy was designed to significantly reduce contamination in residents’ recycling bins.....
Challenges
The Authority's initiatives were continuously monitored. Several areas had reported low recycling rates, which indicated the need for offering incentives to encourage participation in the movement. It was a challenge to retain individuals' participation in the absence of incentive schemes. In 2008, WRAP 13 undertook a study which identified the barriers that prevented residents from participating in the waste management and recycling program.....
Way Ahead
With the Authority and WCAs collectively only achieving 44.1% recycling by the end of 2016, there was a tremendous amount of work still to be done. With the termination of the VLGM, the sustainability and scalability of the Authority’s initiatives came into question. The behavioral challenges, attitudinal challenges,....
Exhibits
Exhibit I: GMWDA's Household Waste Recycling Centers
Exhibit II: GMWDA's Policy Objectives
Exhibit III: GMWDA's 4 Key Themes
Exhibit IV: VLGM's Operations and Facilities
Exhibit V: Communication Channels Exploited by GMWDA
Exhibit VI: GWMDA's Delivery Model
Exhibit VII: GMWDA's Communication Strategy Principles
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