Evaluation of NSW EPA’s Bin Trim Program Round 3

The amount of waste being sent to landfill sites across NSW (and Australia) is of growing concern. Each year, 6.5 million tonnes of business waste goes to landfill, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for 99.7% of all businesses [10]. While recycling rates are increasing, so too is NSW and Australia’s population, which means that overall waste generation is increasing.

The NSW EPA’s Bin Trim Program aims to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill. The Bin Trim Grants Program awards funding to organisations (Grantees) that provide waste experts (Assessors) to help individual businesses avoid, reduce, re-use and recycle materials. Assessors are responsible for targeting and recruiting businesses, with 400 or fewer full-time equivalent employees, across the state and providing support at no cost to businesses. The Bin Trim Rebates Program, which complements the Bin Trim Program, enables eligible businesses, small-scale recyclers and facility managers to receive rebates (between $1,000 – $50,000) to fund up to 50 per cent of the cost of small-scale recycling
equipment.

ARTD’s evaluation and review of the Bin Trim Program covered both the Bin Trim Grants Program and the Bin Trim Rebates Program. Administered by the EPA, as part of the Waste Less, Recycle More initiative, the Bin Trim Program was established to work directly with businesses across NSW and assist them to identify and implement changes to improve their waste management practices. To date, more than 22,000 businesses have been engaged through three rounds of the Program.

ARTD’s evaluation of Round 3 of the Grants and Rebates Program covered five areas of the program including governance, effectiveness of implementation, outcomes, value for money and impact of program changes.

The evaluation included:

• developing and presenting an updated program logic model including measures of success to determine the effectiveness of the Program updating the EPA Business Recycling Unit’s existing risk framework
• analysing program data provided by the EPA to enhance to provide an overall understanding of the Bin Trim Program
• analysing and evaluating the audit data captured in the EPA’s Bin Trim App and other reporting data
• conducting a desktop review into equivalent programs and schemes around Australia and internationally
• conducting semi-structured interviews with stakeholders including EPA staff, Grantees, Assessors and participating businesses
• conducting a Value for Money analysis following the 4Es definition.

ARTD’s work helped support the design, planning and implementation of Round 4 of the Bin Trim Program. The interim and final evaluation and risk assessment reports were used by the EPA to better understand Program issues and risks as well as key learnings, outcomes and achievements.