Cleaner Estates, Better Recycling: Lessons from the Byker Estate Transformation

79% Recycling Participation

How can housing providers increase recycling, reduce fly-tipping and improve resident satisfaction through better waste infrastructure?

Many housing providers face the same challenges:

• Recycling facilities that residents don’t use
• Persistent fly-tipping and side waste
• Contaminated recycling streams
• Poor estate presentation
• Growing pressure to improve environmental performance

While these challenges are often viewed as behavioural issues, the Byker Estate pilot suggests infrastructure design may play a much bigger role than many organisations realise.

Join Karbon Homes, behaviour change specialist Livvy Drake and metroSTOR as they share the findings from a major waste infrastructure pilot and discuss what housing providers can learn from the results.

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What You’ll Learn

Using real-world evidence from the Byker Estate project, we’ll explore:

Why residents recycle more than many housing providers expect
What the research revealed about resident attitudes and motivations.

How infrastructure design influences behaviour
Why accessibility, convenience and presentation matter.

What residents really think about communal recycling facilities
Insights gathered through interviews, surveys and ongoing resident engagement.

Lessons for future housing schemes
Practical recommendations that can be applied across existing estates and new developments.

How to create cleaner, safer communal environments
What contributes to long-term improvements in participation and estate presentation.

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About the Byker Estate Pilot

The Byker Estate is one of the UK’s most famous social housing communities, comprising around 1,800 homes and housing approximately 9,500 residents in Newcastle upon Tyne. Following resident consultation, Karbon Homes introduced new communal waste and recycling infrastructure to address fire safety concerns and improve recycling outcomes.

The project combined infrastructure improvements with independent behavioural research to better understand how residents interacted with the new facilities and identify opportunities for future improvement.

The results included:

• Valuable insights into infrastructure design and behaviour change
• 334,400 litres of recycling collected
• 79% resident recycling participation
• Significant improvements in resident perceptions of communal areas

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Meet the speakers:

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Register Now

If you’re looking to improve recycling participation, reduce estate management challenges and create cleaner communal environments, this webinar will provide practical insights backed by real-world evidence.

Reserve your place today.

Register Here