The British Government’s strategy to encourage recycling is likely to fail and could lead to fly-tipping, a select panel of MPs will report today.
Fortnightly rubbish collections could lead to increased vermin, representing a health risk in towns where the scheme will be unworkable, according to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.
And proposals to charge families for not recycling will merely be seen as an unpopular tax burden, the report adds.
We reported the Government’s Waste Strategy back in May, with Ministers hailing the proposals as an incentive scheme to encourage Britons to reduce rubbish, recycle and reuse.
And according to today’s Metro, which runs with the story on its front page, 140 councils are currently using fortnightly collections and most report a significant increase in recycling.
But the MPs refute this link and use the report to lambaste the Government’s strategy as misguided.
“Instead of bringing the radical change the Government wants, the schemes could lead to public protest, as well as more fly-tipping and non-payment, as councils have no clear guidelines on how to enforce payment,” the MPs will argue.
The Department for Communities and Local Government disagreed with the select panel’s findings, saying: “It’s clear we cannot go on throwing ever increasing amounts of rubbish into landfill.”
Click here for related Global Cool story.
I am originally from a village in Staffordshire. The recycling scheme, run by the council began only a couple of years ago and consists of a green bin for garden waste, a relatively small green crate for glass, tins, cans, plastic etc and a naff plastic bag for your paper in addition to your normal black/grey wheelie bin. Regular waste and recycling get picked up on alternate weeks as I recall. I am now living alternately between the UK and Australia and may I say that the scheme in Aus is far better. The bin for regular waste is about 3/4 of the size of a UK wheelie bin so you have to be more conscious of what you are throwing away. All household recycling (paper, glass, cans, tin, plastic) is thrown into the one recycling bin (a regular sized UK wheelie bin) and garden waste into another. The bins are easily distinguishable from each other by lid colour. A big factor in people not recycling comes down to laziness - sorting out what goes in which bin, bag or crate is just to much hassle for people with busy lives - it’s confusing. The system here takes away the need to think about recycling. You just bung it all in one bin and someone then gets paid to sort it out. We also get an information booklet which clearly explains the symbols on packaging and what can and cannot be recycled which is a big help.
Comment by TJW — July 19, 2007 @ 4:16 am
I have been recycling for the past 5 years. Where i am living now, i seem to be the only one on my street who recycles.
This gets me very annoyed. What is up with people?. Is so hard to get into a routine to sort out glass bottles, to cans etc and put them into recycling bins/boxes?. I have started composting now as well. People are so damn lazy, they just can’t be bothered. Well they need to wake up and take a look around. This climate change thing is quite serious. No one seems to understand what they are doing to our beautiful planet. We all need to do our bit to help save the planet. Come on people wake up, do your bit to help.
Comment by Andrea72 — July 22, 2007 @ 9:36 am
We’ ve gone as green as possible in the office by printing out only files we need to have hard copies of, we encourage other wedding professionals to send‘ brouchures’ online (as they’ re conserving paper, we can keep more up- to- date information and they take up less file space), we recycle our ink cartridges, and magazines and we’ re working on a new project to shred all our paper waste and compost it with our lawn clippings.
Comment by Recycling Bins - Recycling Containers - Recycling Equipment — May 15, 2008 @ 8:08 pm