Improving the Evaluation of the UK's Waste Minimisation Clubs

摘要

Waste minimisation clubs have existed in the UK since the early 1990s to help UK businesses reduce the costs of waste and to act as sources of information on sustainable waste management practices. While evidence has emerged from the clubs on their activities, evaluation has been unsystematic. This has been due, in part, to a failure to stipulate appropriate procedures for evaluation before a club is created. To consider this question, self-published reports from a number of clubs were assessed against a set of components in an ideal economic evaluation. Analysis suggests that self-reporting lead to reports that do not match up to recognised principles of evaluation. The failure to identify mandatory reporting standards makes comparison between clubs difficult and means factors key to success that are learned by one club are not readily passed on to others. These flaws arguably threaten the future of a key element of the UK's policy on waste management. It is vital, therefore, to establish agreed criteria for evaluating future clubs that will tackle the current gap in policy.