Nectar points offered for greener & healthier life
In the UK, Birmingham City Council has partnered with coalition loyalty programme Nectar to create a pilot scheme that will reward residents in Birmingham with Nectar points when they recycle or visit their local leisure centre.
The initiative follows on from Nectar's other successful 'green schemes' with Sainsbury's, where customers can earn Nectar points when they reuse shopping bags.
This scheme will see the public collecting Nectar points every time they visit the leisure centre to use the fitness facilities, or put their recycling boxes out for collection.
Residents in the pilot area will be given bar-coded stickers to be placed on their blue paper recycling containers which will be scanned by Council recycling crews every time a collection is made.
Residents will earn 25 Nectar points for each collection or visit to the leisure centre, which can either be added to existing or new Nectar accounts. The Nectar points can be redeemed for rewards at outlets such as Sainsbury's, Homebase and Argos.
According to Jan Pieter Lips, managing director for Nectar, "This is an innovative way for local authorities to reward residents for behaviour that benefits their community. Nectar already rewards its collectors for greener behaviours such as recycling bags when shopping at Sainsbury's or paperless billing from British Gas."
The pilot will target 5,000 homes in the Bourneville and Erdington wards of Birmingham and, if successful, the scheme will be rolled out to some 400,000 households across Birmingham. The scheme is being funded by the West Midlands Improvement Efficiency Initiative. The initial pilot programme will run from September 2011 to March 2012, with all eligible residents receiving information packs and bar code stickers in the post.
Councillor Timothy Huxtable of Birmingham City Council concluded: "Increasing public participation in recycling is a key objective for both the City Council and the future of the city as a whole. As more and more people recycle, not only will they be helping to save the environment but they also will be rewarding themselves."
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