We have set ourselves a big challenge to reduce waste and to support the wider aim of a net zero carbon Liverpool City Region by 2040.
To achieve this we need a plan, a roadmap to chart our journey and get us to our Zero Waste 2040 destination. We will need to make some big steps and many small steps forward and new ways of working together with residents and businesses to help them reduce avoidable waste.
We will be guided by new national targets and milestones for reducing waste as we develop our roadmap. We’ve set some of these out in the timeline graphic below.
MRWA projects in development are grouped under key themes below:
1) Cut consumption
• Create a reuse culture through marketing campaigns to achieve behavioural change
• Establish an LCR Reuse Network consisting of warehouses, hubs, and outlets to manage unwanted items from households and commercial and industrial waste
• Improve reuse at Household Waste Recycling Centres
• Provide more sharing, reuse and repair spaces and services for residents and businesses
• Maximise social value from the reuse of household items and commercial and industrial waste.
2) Recover more resources
• Implement the National Resources and Waste Strategy in the city region by setting ambitious reuse and recycling targets for municipal waste (household and business waste) of 55% by 2025, 30% by 2030 and 65% by 2035
• Make our LCR infrastructure and contracts ‘fit for purpose’ for ‘Zero Waste’
• Work with LCR Councils and Housing Associations to ensure residents have access to home or community composting.
3) Increase knowledge, information and education
• Deliver a rolling waste composition analysis programme across all waste streams to improve knowledge of our material resources and guide future decisions on resource management
• Create targeted public awareness campaigns across the city region from our data analysis
• Align our zero waste and climate action reporting with the United Nations ‘Sustainable Development Goals’
• Develop and share interactive zero waste education resources across the city region
• Provide residents and businesses with clear and consistent prevention, reuse and recycling information, supported with proactive information campaigns.
Developing reuse opportunities is key action and there are a lot of local organisations working to prevent and reuse waste. We want to link these projects, shops and services together into a network to help then grow and encourage residents and businesses to support them.
We have created an Interactive Reuse Map for residents showing the locations for reuse opportunities like repair services, reuse shops, share/hire venues, real nappy suppliers, sewing clubs and more. You can find the map here and we have tried to make sure it’s easy to use for everyone.
Waste Analysis – we need to better understand what materials are in our waste. Are we throwing away food that could have been eaten, are we putting items in the right bin, are there are items we could have repaired or re-used? The more we understand about our waste, the more effective our plans will be to reduce it, which is why we have embarked on a Waste Composition Analysis of the Region’s waste habits.
Food Waste – we want to work with residents to highlight the issue of food waste and give them the skills and confidence to take action and reduce their food waste, whilst eating well and saving money along the way.
We’ll keep the website updated with more of our actions so you can see what we’ve done and what’s coming up next.