Between March 2023 and March 2024, the London Borough of Hounslow (LB Hounslow) and ReLondon co-delivered a demonstrator ‘circular economy’ neighbourhood in Heston.

Heston ‘In the Loop’ (HITL / the Project), aimed to establish and strengthen opportunities for wasting less, and increase reuse, repair, sharing and recycling in Heston. This contributed to LB Hounslow’s wider corporate plan to create a liveable, greener and thriving Hounslow and was incorporated into the Recycling and Reduction Plan. Through HITL, LB Hounslow and ReLondon aimed to catalyse and support ‘change agents’ to increase consumer ‘choice infrastructure’. The HITL theory of change anticipated that this in turn would influence resident behaviours, with more residents making circular consumption choices. Nineteen intervention partners became involved at various stages of the Project. Concurrently, Heston benefitted from pre-planned borough-wide activity that might influence circular consumption choices / behaviours (referred throughout the report as ‘business as usual (BAU) activity’ 

Our Role:

We were commissioned to complete a baseline, interim and post-activity evaluation to understand whether the project was successful in achieving it's intended beneficial impacts. The project involved a baseline and post-activity resident and visitor survey, analysis of intervention data, and a food waste composition analysis. This included comparison of London wide composition analysis, West London Waste Authority residual waste compositional analysis and analysis of waste tonnage data.

Outcome:

The evaluation found clear evidence of the intended outcomes being realised across the key metrics. Project stakeholders interviewed across the evaluation felt the HITL concept, promoting and embedding circular economy activities through connected activities, focused on a neighbourhood level, was a good one. Though many also questioned whether Heston – with some barriers around language and engagement with digital services - represented the optimal choice of area to trial the concept and demonstrate its potential beneficial impacts. The HITL trial also produced valuable learnings for delivery partners (in designing and delivering – particularly area-based - activity) and the Project team (in designing and delivering similar interventions in the future). ReLondon following the project developed a Toolkit for circular neighbourhoods.