Explore garden waste, recycling technology and resident engagement insights for UK councils in Little Green Magazine from PermiServ, part of Routeware.
SEPTEMBER 2026
ISSUE 1
The latest waste collection tech and communications insights
Following on from The Little Green Book 2025, the Little Green Magazine serves as an interim update for garden waste and recycling professionals.
Navigating Digital Waste Tracking Digital Waste Tracking (DWT) is another major change on the horizon, and many councils are still working out what the new requirements mean for their existing services and operations. Rather than treating DWT as just another compliance exercise, Routeware sees an opportunity to help authorities understand current processes and identify where technology can make capturing and sharing waste data simpler. Our experience across systems, vehicles, crews, back- office teams and residents gives us a valuable view of how everything connects. As DWT develops, we can help councils identify gaps, assess readiness and build a practical roadmap towards compliance – sharing knowledge and reviewing processes so no council has to navigate the change alone.
Louise Lambourne Sales Director PermiServ now part of Routeware
REFLECTIONS The past few months have brought an exciting period of change, learning and opportunity for the team following PermiServ’s acquisition by Routeware. Bringing two established businesses together means taking time to understand each other’s products, customers and areas of expertise, and finding how to combine them into something stronger. One of the most positive developments has been the growing exchange of knowledge across the wider Routeware portfolio. We bring years of experience with local authorities and a deep understanding of the UK waste sector, particularly garden waste, while gaining access to Routeware’s broader technology across route optimisation, in-cab technology, resident engagement and digital services. The result is a team learning new products while sharing its own insight into the UK market and the pressures councils face daily. What excites us most is that nothing which made PermiServ successful needs to change. Our relationships, customer focus and understanding of local government remain central; the opportunity is to build on those foundations with a far wider range of technology and expertise. We are already having broader conversations with customers and identifying where different Routeware solutions can genuinely help – not introducing technology for its own sake, but understanding councils’ challenges and offering more ways to solve them. There is still plenty to learn, but that is part of what makes this chapter exciting. We are proud of what we built as PermiServ, and equally excited about what we can now build as part of Routeware: the acquisition hasn’t changed our passion for the sector, only given us a much bigger toolkit.
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PermiServ’s New Home
households and eligible properties, enabling more targeted renewal communications rather than broad campaigns – working alongside wider resident engagement tools like ReCollect to turn insight into participation. We are also tackling the practical impact of postage delays. This year we have introduced UK Mail as an alternative postal option, helping manage costs while maintaining delivery performance. We also see an opportunity to rethink the renewal journey itself – encouraging earlier renewals, adjusting renewal dates or introducing targeted reminders – reducing missed collections and avoidable calls. Every scheme is different, so we’re happy to share what we’re seeing across the sector and work with you on changes that suit your council. EVENTS YOU CAN FIND US AT • Routeware’s User Conference York, 21st October
The Importance of Garden Waste Collections
Agony Aunt - My Big Garden Waste Problems
MORE REASONS TO GET YOUR GARDEN WASTE STREAM RIGHT IN 2027: • The Circular Economy Package’s 65% municipal waste recycling goal by 2035
Inside The Little Green Event 2026: Communications Campaigns Driving Results
How Well Do You Know Your Residents? Applying Behavioural Science to Waste Services | Subscriptions Booster Tool Trialled with Highland Council
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The Environmental Improvement Plan’s ambition to halve residual waste per capita (excluding major mineral waste) by 2042 A possible ban on biodegradable municipal waste to landfill coming (already rolling out in Scotland) * Sources: Defra and Beta Sepa
Let’s Get Wizzy With It - How Online Communication Tools are Supporting Collection Targets
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Slick Somerset Service Redesign
Scan to get your free ticket to attend.
Supporting Our Councils Through Rising Costs, and Helping Permits Arrive on Time Budgets remain incredibly challenging for local authorities, and rising postage and fulfilment costs – particularly Royal Mail pricing – are outside our control. Rather than simply passing these increases on, we have developed a new suite of garden waste sales and insight features, launching October 2026, made available to customers at no additional cost. These help councils identify previous subscribers, non- subscribed
Newcastle: Scaling Flexible Plastics & Food Waste Collections | UK ETS Expansion: What Rising Carbon Costs Mean for Councils
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Larac National (Letsrecycle.com) 7th and 8th October
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Collections Conference 19th November
Just for Fun
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Digital Waste Tracking Conference (Letsrecycle.com) 20th November
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THE IMPORTANCE OF GARDEN WASTE COLLECTIONS
AGONY AUNT with Ms Municipal MY BIG GARDEN WASTE PROBLEMS 2026
The law changed for household waste collections in England on 31 March 2026 under the government’s Simpler Recycling reforms. Waste collectors must by default collect food and garden waste separately from dry recyclables and residual waste. Local authorities are only required to collect garden waste if a household requests the service, and councils are allowed to charge a subscription fee for garden waste collections*. What this outlines is that councils need to have a readily available and functioning garden waste service on hand and ready for when and if their residents request it. While the numbers are high for the amount of councils collecting and charging for garden waste, there’s still around 16% of councils across the UK who aren’t harnessing a subscription based service. Let’s go back to the basics on why garden waste collections matter...
Welcome back to the page every garden waste professional secretly turns to first. In this issue, Ms Municipal has been eavesdropping on the sector’s own “agony hour” - a room full of councils and collection teams swapping their trickiest garden waste headaches — and has untangled it into answers you can actually use. Real questions, real fixes, no jargon. Pull up a compost bin and get comfortable.
WE’RE TORN BETWEEN PAPER PERMITS AND IN-CAB VERIFICATION FOR NEXT YEAR’S RENEWAL. WHICH ONE SHOULD WE TRUST? — MR T IN TREESHIRE Darling, why choose? Across the sector, half of services run both together, and it’s the smart choice. According to 22 councils that answered our market research survey in 2025, 82% either use permits, in cab, or both, with both being the majority. Only around 15% rely on permits alone and 20% on in-cab systems alone. A permit gives crews and residents something visual and instantly checkable at the kerb; in-cab data gives you the paper trail when a faded, taped-together or suspiciously homemade permit needs a second look (and optimises your rounds!). Run together, they catch fraud that neither spots alone, and turn “nobody paid for that bin” into a five-second lookup instead of a doorstep stand-off. WE KNOW PLENTY OF ELIGIBLE HOUSEHOLDS HAVEN’T SIGNED UP, BUT OUR TARGETING FEELS LIKE GUESSWORK. WHERE DO WE START? — GUESSING IN GARLANDSHIRE Start with your eligible properties list, not your campaign artwork. Once you can see who could subscribe and hasn’t, you can test properly — an email nudge to a defined batch, a follow-up, then measure who actually converts before you spend on print. Blanket leaflet drops aren’t always the most effective tool in the box, particularly used in isolation; QR codes and online sign-up are where residents respond now. And don’t forget your awkward addresses: corner plots where the bin sits on a different road to the billing address are a quiet reason good customers never make it onto your books at all.
RESIDENTS KEEP LAMINATING, HOME-PRINTING AND GENERALLY REINVENTING OUR GARDEN WASTE PERMITS. HOW DO WE STAY AHEAD? — FED UP OF FAKES Change your permit colour every single year, and never let one shade fade gently into the next - pink into orange, orange into yellow is asking for trouble. Print the year in large, unmissable numbers, and put the property address on the permit itself so crews can confirm a bin belongs before they’re even level with it. Then train crews and call handlers on the tells: proper thermal print has an integrity a home-printed label doesn’t, and anything laminated or edged with tape is announcing itself. Address-on-permit and annual colour rotation are quietly becoming the industry standard, for good reason.
A STRATEGIC PRIORITY, BY THE NUMBERS Garden Waste Services, The not-so-hot potato that no one wants to hold? Well, garden waste has now become a more strategic waste stream than ever before. PermiServ’s own research drawn from open- source and client data as of February 2025 found that approximately 92% of UK councils now collect garden waste, and roughly 84% of those do so as a chargeable service. Well known and respected ex-waste consultant Johnn Woodruff argues the tonnage case is now well understood: structured collection schemes lift recycling rates while keeping costs under control, and legislation prevents councils recovering more than the cost of collection through fees. Crucially, shifting garden waste out of the residual stream cuts disposal costs as open windrow composting is typically carried out locally, so the benefits of compost production stay within the region, strengthening the circular economy further. WHAT STILL NEEDS ADDRESSING None of this is friction-free. Paid-for collection can discourage participation during a cost-of-living squeeze, and contamination plastics, treated wood and other non-compostable material finding their way into garden waste bins remains a persistent problem. Clearer public guidance, better segregation messaging, and continued investment in composting and anaerobic digestion capacity will matter as much as the policy backdrop in closing that gap.
OPPORTUNITIES IN KERBSIDE COLLECTIONS SERVICES A garden waste subscription creates a valuable customer base that councils can leverage to promote additional services (for the greater good of better waste management by all). Many councils offer more than just waste collection, including bulky waste removal, leisure services, and other community programs. There’s potential to ‘upsell’ or bundle services , such as offering discounts on bulky waste collection or incentives like free swims or vouchers for local garden centers. Partnering with local businesses not only benefits residents but also supports the local economy. By enhancing the value of the subscription beyond just waste collection, councils can encourage more sign-ups and improve retention. Keeping costs competitive while offering added benefits helps ensure the service is seen as a valuable package rather than just another fee. There are opportunities for councils there to sell the other things they do and the other services and that can only be positive for residents who will be seeing their subscription as something more than just the garden waste service.
WHEN’S THE LEAST PAINFUL TIME TO LAUNCH OR SHAKE UP OUR GARDEN WASTE SERVICE? — NERVOUS ABOUT APRIL
Avoid April if you possibly can — that’s council tax bill season, and your phone lines are already drowning before a single bin query lands. The sector has drifted noticeably later in the year, giving residents a calmer window to sign up through the following January to March instead. And once you’re a year in, that’s your moment for round optimisation: you now know who’s genuinely using the service, so replan routes around real behaviour rather than launch-day guesswork.
Gareth Rollings Head of Waste West Sussex County Council
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HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR RESIDENTS? APPLYING BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE TO WASTE SERVICES
Spend dropped to around £250; online renewals rose from 20% to 46%, with 11,500 new online accounts created, twenty times normal volume. Why “No Fly-Tipping” Signs Backfire A “No fly-tipping” sign can increase fly-tipping, since it signals a known dumping ground the council clears quickly. A sign stating someone nearby was fined £400 works better, specific, believable, driven by social proof. Overused, though, these tricks wear thin and caution is advised. Bin behaviour, he noted, often runs on habit, not conscious choice; the real challenge is disrupting that autopilot. A Framework, Not a Formula He uses COM-B, developed by UCL, mapping the capability, opportunity, and motivation behind a behaviour. On one estate, waste analysis pointed to polystyrene as the contamination culprit, but walking the site revealed black bags were the real problem: a trusted local WhatsApp admin shifted behaviour where official letters hadn’t. On advertising’s future, Ridley-Moy favoured targeted digital ads over print, timed with weather forecasts to catch people heading outside, not in January. Awareness, environment and motivation must align, and no intervention is worth keeping unless you can measure it worked. Download: Behaviour Change Planner
Dominic Ridley-Moy Founder, Behaviour Change Network
COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGNS DRIVING RESULTS SECOND TIME LUCKY: HOW TRAFFORD TURNED EXPERIENCE INTO A 51,000 PERMIT SUCCESS
The Psychology of the Bin and Beyond: What Behavioural Science Can Teach the Waste Sector
Some services don’t succeed at the first attempt, not because they’re the wrong idea, but because timing and communication matters just as much as the idea itself. That’s the lesson from Trafford Council, where the same garden waste scheme initially struggled before thriving the second time, purely on the strength of its communication. A Learning Curve Trafford first introduced a charge for garden waste in 2017. It ran for two years before a new administration paused it. Permits sat on disconnected systems, the call centre was stretched, and crews kept emptying bins without a valid permit in place. Trust took a knock, and numbers slipped as residents realised checks weren’t being made. Round Two, Done Differently Relaunching in 2025, the team took eight months’ lead time, brought in a reliable external permit provider, and treated the first attempt as a lesson in storytelling, not service design. The change looked small, but needed careful explaining, since food waste stayed free and neighbouring boroughs still collected garden waste at no cost.
The Comms Machine Residents moved through three phases: awareness, urgency, then enforcement. It began with internal briefings and a public consultation, followed by council tax bill inserts, a dedicated website, and social posts leaning on the “rule of seven.” The standout channel was physical bin tags, timed to hit residents exactly when they engaged with the service, staggered to avoid overwhelming the system. Crew briefings and aligned updates kept every touchpoint consistent. The Payoff The result: 51,000 permits in 2025, stronger online uptake, and no overwhelmed systems. Sixty-one percent of households with a garden subscribed. Trafford’s takeaways: start internal comms early and involve teams, not just inform them; consistency prevents complaints; and sequencing beats volume. As the team put it, it wasn’t just the service that delivered the results — it was how they communicated it.
How many decisions does a person make in a day? 35,000 is often quoted as a good guess, most on autopilot. It’s how behaviour change expert Dominic Ridley-Moy captured The Little Green Event attendee’s attention: before comms teams try to change resident behaviour, they need to understand how little conscious thought most behaviour involves. Fix the Problem Before Running Comms Dominic traces his interest to garden waste renewals at the London Borough of Havering, where the council spent around £10,000 a time on newspaper ads pushing online renewals, for almost no return. That failure led him to books like Nudge, and a realisation: the fix isn’t always a comms campaign, but the service itself. He simplified the renewal form buried under 15 steps, heat-mapped where eyes landed on the letter, and moved the phone number to the back of the page to nudge self- service, cutting print advertising entirely.
THE NUMBERS SUBSCRIPTIONS 2017/18 - 45,000 permits 2018/19 - 43,000 permits 2025/26 - 51,000 permits 61% of our properties with gardens
Have you checked out the bio-bin?
SUBSCRIPTIONS BOOSTER TOOL TRIALLED WITH HIGHLAND COUNCIL
THE LONG ROAD: GARDEN WASTE IN THE HIGHLANDS Few councils face logistics quite like Highland Council’s. Covering an area the size of Belgium, with six inhabited islands, 4,000 miles of road, and just 134,000 households, The Highland Waste Team hauls black bag waste four hours to Dunbar for processing, at roughly £200 a tonne. Against that backdrop, garden waste has been something of an afterthought. Charging began in 2017, prices crept up for three years running, and uptake has sat around 30% of eligible properties ever since, with no clear picture of why. That’s now changing. Working with PermaServ, Highland has started properly analysing its subscriber data for the first time: roughly 24,000 loyal customers, a 10% churn rate, and thousands of lapsed or intermittent subscribers
nobody had previously tracked. The findings are already reframing decisions; rather than another blanket price rise, the team can now make the case to politicians that recovering lapsed customers should come first. Next steps include targeted letters to lapsed households (UPRN data suggests most haven’t simply moved away), mapping subscriber patterns and finally introducing direct debit payments. As Imogen put it, the data doesn’t just inform pricing, it earns the argument for holding it steady. PermiServ are thrilled to be working on this tool internally to eventually roll out to all of our customer bases, free of charge. Watch this space for more developments! Source: The Little Green Event 2026 Speaker Imogen Percy-Bell, Principal Waste Management Officer, Highland Council and PermiServ
UPPER VENTILATION GRID
LOWER VENTILATION GRID
LID IN LID
INTERNAL BASE
CUSTOMISATION BY THERMAL TRANSFER GRAPHIC
PEDAL
Find out more about the USP’s of the garden waste bio-container bin by scanning here
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LET’S GET WIZZY WITH IT. HOW ONLINE COMMUNICATION TOOLS ARE SUPPORTING COLLECTION TARGETS
SLICK SERVICE REDESIGN IN NORTH SOMERSET A CASE STUDY
Routeware showcased ReCollect, a suite of resident apps used by around 30 UK councils, and how Newcastle and Nottingham apply it to garden waste communication. A bin calendar shows collection dates and guidance on what to include, layered with campaigns (soft, recurring reminders) and alerts (urgent, one-off notices). The standout theme was segmentation: tailoring messages to returning subscribers, lapsed users, and first-timers. A companion search tool, Waste Wizard, showed garden waste is among the most-searched items across all customers. The goal: merging these tools with permit systems into one resident-managed platform. Garden Waste Functionality – Collection Information Every resident’s bin calendar can carry more than a date. Alongside each garden waste collection, councils can display exactly how to present the bin, what belongs in it, and what doesn’t, so residents get their answer the moment they check the app, instead of hunting for an old leaflet. Councils can choose how visible this information is: some show garden collection dates to every resident with a note that subscription is required, while others, like Newcastle, only reveal garden information to residents who’ve actually signed up, keeping things simple for everyone else. Segmented content like this, including trial-specific details for residents in a plastic bags pilot, means each resident only sees what’s relevant to them, cutting confusion and unnecessary contact with the council. Push your campaigns harder Campaigns are one of the most underused levers available, and the results from live councils show why that needs to change. Nottingham didn’t run one static message, it ran three in sequence: sign-ups are open, your service starts in two weeks, your service has now started, each with a direct link straight to the signup portal. Whitby timed a campaign for June, right before gardens got unruly in the summer heat, catching residents at the exact moment the service becomes relevant to them. These aren’t one-off blasts either; they sit quietly at the top of the bin calendar, land in weekly reminder emails, and surface in the app, so a resident sees the message multiple times without it ever feeling like spam.
North Somerset Environment Company (NSEC), a local authority trading company wholly owned by North Somerset Council, was set up in 2021 with a focus on reliable services and doing right by its communities and environment. Since then it has expanded steadily, taking on driver training, fly-tipping clearance, commercial waste and highway maintenance contracts, and in October 2024 delivered its first major event cleansing operation at the Weston Beach Race, serving roughly 25,000 attendees. Against this growth, NSEC launched an ambitious route optimisation programme to improve efficiency, resilience and service quality. It began in February 2024 by optimising and rezoning the subscription garden waste service, with an early decision to decouple garden waste collections from residual waste and recycling rounds. That change freed the modelling process from historical constraints and opened up far greater flexibility. Throughout, the project deliberately kept frontline crews involved, recognising that their day-to-day knowledge was essential to routes that would work in practice, not just on paper.
NSEC used Routeware’s EasyRoute software to drive the programme, led by Project Manager Shane Young, following a structured, data-led methodology. The first phase built an accurate model of the existing service from tonnages, vehicle performance, round times, property data and road constraints, all cross-checked with operational managers and crews to validate assumptions. With that baseline in place, initial draft routes were created and taken straight to collection crews for reviews, and other graphics to match. Their feedback on local knowledge, access issues and sequencing surfaced problems invisible in the data alone, and repeated cycles of drafting and review steadily refined the designs. Senior Supervisor Dan Cooper was seconded into the project to keep engagement consistent, liaising between the design team and the wider workforce; he has since become the company’s Operational Improvement Lead, carrying that collaborative approach into other parts of the business. Once designs matured, remaining issues were reconciled and the software’s outputs were used to quantify the scale of change and its likely impact on residents, supporting formal sign-off. Go-live preparation centred on crew familiarisation and communication: detailed crew packs with route maps and operational notes, resident communications about day changes, and depot drop-in sessions to build crew confidence. On go-live, enhanced on-street and depot resources monitored old and new routes, catching incorrect bin presentations and issuing reminder leaflets, while performance data across the first three cycles let the team track trends and make evidence-based adjustments. A formal review closed out the project, capturing lessons for future work. In 2026, North Somerset Council and NSEC were awarded an iESE Certificate of Excellence for the Service Change Project. Alongside the route optimisation work, the project
modernised NSEC’s operational infrastructure wholesale: a full fleet replacement with new Romaquip vehicles, all fitted with CMS telematics, and a detailed route optimisation exercise for the company’s three-weekly collection rounds using Routeware’s software, which enabled smarter scheduling, reduced mileage and greater efficiency without compromising customer service. The move to three-weekly collections also made North Somerset the first district in the UK to collect soft plastics at the kerbside, ahead of it becoming mandatory for all councils. The programme’s success rested on close collaboration between data, service design, operations, the council and residents. By pairing robust analytics with frontline expertise and clear communication, NSEC has built a more resilient, efficient service and laid solid foundations for continued improvement in the years ahead.
You’re a Wizard, Harry!
Snapshot of the Waste Wizard Tool, part of the Resident Tool - ReCollect App by Routeware
Check out more case studies at: routeware.com/en _ gb/resources
The real upgrade is segmentation. Instead of one generic push to everyone, campaigns can be tailored by resident history: a warm thank-you and sticker update for returning subscribers, a value reminder (“you saved X last year”) for lapsed users, a what-to-expect message for first-timers, and a benefits-led pitch for residents who’ve never used the service at all. Layer in alerts for anything urgent, like a vehicle breakdown or a service start and end date, and councils have a messaging engine that works far harder than a single seasonal reminder ever could. The councils getting the best results aren’t running more campaigns, they’re running smarter, more targeted ones, and there’s clear room for others to do the same.
Image: The first phase focused on building an accurate model of the current service. This involved collecting and importing a wide range of operational data including tonnages, vehicle performance, round times, property information and road constraints.
Source: The Little Green Event Speaker, Phil Blythe, Routeware
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NEWCASTLE: SCALING FLEXIBLE PLASTICS & FOOD WASTE COLLECTION
JUST FOR FUN
How well do you know your rubbish? No Googling - your colleagues are watching.
BIN DAY, SORTED Newcastle City Council collects waste from 138,000 households at a cost of around £20 million a year, and for a long time the phone was still the main way residents found out what went where. Even with well-loved campaigns like “Leave Newcastle Happy”, which tackles student fly-tipping at the end of every term, recycling participation still varied sharply across the city, and no one was quite sure why. In 2024, the council partnered with Routeware to change that, rolling out ReCollect, a digital engagement platform, alongside the “Newcastle Bins” app. The app lets residents check collection days, sign up for reminders, and search hundreds of items in a Waste A-Z tool — all available in six languages, and promoted everywhere from library banners to council-tax letters. “ReCollect has helped Newcastle transition to a digital engagement strategy. Taking a transformational approach to waste management is and will continue to be
critical to ensuring the city operates within sustainable environmental and financial limits.” — Rebecca Wilson, Operations Manager in Waste and Recycling, Newcastle City Council. The numbers back her up: over 75,000 addresses reached, 14,000-plus reminders sent, and more than a million bin-calendar checks — each one a phone call the contact centre didn’t have to take. The platform is also carrying Newcastle through bigger service changes. It helped promote the council’s role in FlexCollect, the UK’s biggest flexible-plastics pilot, which grew from 7,000 to over 34,000 households with 41% participation and 95% satisfaction. It’s now supporting October 2025’s move to fully commingled recycling, and will underpin the wider rollout of food waste collections — already running for 5,200 households — across the rest of the city in 2026.
ACROSS 1. PermiServ sends millions of these to garden waste customers. (7) 5. The people every council waste service ultimately serves. (9) 8. The result of putting the wrong material in a recycling container. (13) 9. A soil improver made from food or garden material. (7) 11. Turning used materials into something new. (9) DOWN 2. Routeware’s resident-facing digital solution. (9) 3. The subscription service that flourishes when the grass starts growing. (6,5) 4. Three letters increasingly heard in the sector: Digital Waste Tracking. (3) 6. A small container that inspires surprisingly big conversations. (3) 7. The vehicle that makes collection day happen. (5) 10. What councils want garden waste customers to do each year. (5) 12. The frontline team behind every collection service. (4)
FOR A COUNCIL JUGGLING SEVERAL SERVICE CHANGES AT ONCE, DIGITAL COMMUNICATION TURNED OUT TO BE THE THING HOLDING IT ALL TOGETHER.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE EXPANSION OF THE UK
93% of surveyed councils say they can’t absorb these costs within existing budgets.
EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME (ETS) TO THE WASTE SECTOR 2028: The Year Incineration Gets a Price Tag
Scan for answers
2028 EFW/INCINERATION ENTERS UK ETS £100MS–£1BN+ LGA-MODELLED ADDED COST, 2028–36 93% COUNCILS UNABLE TO ABSORB COST
From 2028, the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will expand to cover waste incineration and energy-from-waste plants, after a two-year transitional period. For councils, the impact is mostly financial: once operators must buy carbon allowances, those costs are expected to flow straight through to the gate fees councils pay to dispose of residual waste. The numbers are stark. LGA modelling puts the additional cost to councils between 2028 and 2036 at anywhere from hundreds of millions to over £1 billion, with a cumulative total potentially reaching £6.5 billion by 2036. Last year, 93% of councils told the LGA they couldn’t absorb this within existing waste and recycling budgets.
Frustratingly, councils have little control over what drives these costs. They must collect household waste regardless of composition, while its carbon content — plastics especially — is set by product design and consumer behaviour, not local services. Expect a renewed push toward reuse, recycling participation and digital resident engagement as the payoff on that investment grows sharper. But without faster Extended Producer Responsibility reform and ETS revenue reinvested locally, decarbonisation costs risk landing hardest on councils and residents, not the polluters causing them.
How many times can a waste officer say ‘contamination’ in one meeting? A) 4 B) 12 C) 37 D) There is no known upper limit
HAVE YOU PLAYED THE WASTE SORTING GAME? Test out your knowledge on recycling by scanning the QR!
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Thanks for spending some time with this issue of the Little Green Magazine, brought to you by PermiServ— now part of Routeware. Every question, gripe and hard-won fix in these pages came from people doing this job for real, and we’re grateful you’re one of them. We’re continuing to gather your insights alongside LARAC ahead of a fuller edition next year, and this issue’s one-question survey — just scan the QR code — takes seconds to answer but genuinely shapes what we cover next. If something in here struck a nerve, or you think we’ve missed something en- tirely, that’s exactly what we want to hear. Thanks for reading, and see you in the next issue. The Little Green Network teamPermiServe, now part of Routeware Thanks for spending some time with this issue of the Little Green Magazine, brought to you by PermiServ — now part of Routeware. Every question, gripe and hard-won fix in these pages came from people doing this job for real, and we’re grateful you’re one of them. Help shape next year’s Little Green Book! We’re working with LARAC to gather your insights for next year’s edition of The Little Green Book. We want to know what you’d find most valuable, whether that’s topics to read about, things to learn, or data to benchmark against. The survey takes just 5–10 minutes, and everyone who completes it can enter a prize draw to win a £35 voucher of their choice. We’d love to hear from you! Thanks for reading, and see you in the next issue!
The PermiServ Team, now part of Routeware Scan for survey
Scan to join The Little Green Network on Linkedin
www.routeware.com/en _ gb/permiserv/
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