The Waste Finance Report is published annually and provides an analysis of waste financial data relating to:

• Residual Waste
• Food Waste
• Green Waste
• Co-mingled food and green waste
• Dry recycling
• Bring Sites
• Household Waste Recycling Centres
• Commercial Waste
• Nappy/AHP waste collections
• Clinical Waste

The main reasons behind having an annual waste finance report are as follows:

• To provide annual finance reports on waste management undertaken by local authorities. A significant proportion of recycling activities are funded through the Single Revenue Grant (SRG) and Welsh Government understandably would like to identify whether this is being used to its greatest efficiency.
• Cost modelling for the review of the national waste strategy. 
• To enable comparisons to be made between local authorities, with the aim of sharing of best practice and resulting in service improvement and efficiencies.

Process

Wastedataflow (a database for collecting tonnage data from waste activities) has been adapted in Wales to create a single data entry point to accept tonnage data and waste financial data inputted by local authorities. When completed this information is analysed and used to produce the waste finance report, together with short individual summaries for each local authority. The report also becomes the basis for more qualitative analysis through the Waste Benchmarking work, assessing in more detail the causes of differences in cost between authorities. Refinements to this process over the years has helped to improve the quality, accuracy and consistency of the data captured.

For more information contact: Emma Shakeshaft