The Government is watching your waste
The Mail on Sunday had an interesting article showing that local councils are “bugging” our wheelie bins to determine how much non-recycled waste we are producing. To be fair the information they are collecting is minimal - it calculates how full the bin is, and is the equivalent of someone with a pen and paper marking how full/empty it is (but much more efficient).
The real ‘concern’ is how this information is going to be used. Clearly it is a precursor to a “pay as you throw” scheme where households are charged for not recycling. Although I believe this is inevitable, I’m not convinced it will work (people will just dump their waste elsewhere) and should only be implemented with an equal policy to get producers to reduce packaging - perhaps the “one layer” scheme I blogged here.
Councils’ first policy should be to introduce the fortnightly pick up that Canterbury City Council has implemented - discussed here. The stench of 2 week old rubbish is enough to convince anyone to recycle.
Oh and finally if the Tories are going to criticise the scheme can they come up with something better than:
“Conservative MP Andrew Pelling said burglars could hack into the computer system to see if sudden reductions in waste at individual households meant the owners were on holiday and the property empty.”
Don’t people have to put the bin out to be collected? Isn’t that be a pretty clear sign that they’re away on holiday?!