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£100 rubbish tax if you fail to hit recycling targets
Nicholas Cecil, Political Correspondent21.01.08
Millions of London households face being hit with a £100 rubbish "tax" under a pay-as-you-throw scheme, the Standard can reveal.
People who refuse to recycle their waste would be charged a penalty, while greener households would benefit from a rebate.
The Government initially insisted that incentives and penalties would be around £30 to £50. Officials dismissed claims by critics that the real cost would be £100 or even more.
But The Standard can reveal that ministers now believe that a £100 charge or rebate may be needed to encourage householders to tackle Britain's waste mountain.
Many areas of London, as well as in other cities and towns, were expected to be exempt from pay-as-you-throw because of difficulties in implementing it for flats, given that waste is often discarded in communal bins.
Mayor Ken Livingstone warned that the scheme would be a "disaster" if introduced in the capital.
Ministers accept that there are difficulties for flats but they want town halls to investigate how it could work.
Some cities already operate payasyou throw for houses and flats. In Brussels, households dispose of residual rubbish - such as food waste and nappies - in official white bin bags, which they have to purchase from shops. Bags for recycling, such as blue for plastics and bottles, are cheaper.
In several cities, including New York, inspectors check bags that breach recycling rules and try to trace culprits. If they are not found, a whole block of flats faces being fined.
Some smaller blocks of flats in London already have a bin for each household and they could be given padlocks to prevent neighbours dumping rubbish to avoid a charge.
The Local Government Association, which represents town halls, signalled it may back pay-asyouthrow for flats. A spokesman said: "If a scheme could be developed for flats that was workable and fair to residents, we would support that." Five pilot projects on the waste scheme are to be carried out. Householders' non-recyclable waste could be weighed, with a certain amount a year being free. Those who stayed below the allowance would get rebates and people who exceeded it would have to pay more.
Alternatively, people could receive a limited number of marked rubbish bags for their waste and would have to buy more if they had to dispose of any excess.
Increasing the penalties and incentives was immediately criticised by the Conservatives but won support from environmentalists.
Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said: "We support measures to improve recycling and reduce waste but bullying has never been a good way of getting people to do things."
Michael Warhurst, Friends of the Earth's senior waste campaigner, said: "The concept of paying less to recycle more is a positive step in the right direction, as long as kerbside services are in place to support that recycling."
Reader views (14)
The annual cost/household attributed to refuse collection in Harrow is around £90 - so the nice man from the refuse department told me. Harrow currently have three domestic refuse collection services.
If this is all it costs, then I'm not sure why there is any need to impose a £100 fine or £100 annual cost for collection unless a similar reduction in council tax is made.
- Marc, Harrow, UK
Crash Gordon and Red Ken go away!
- Lordy, Islington, London
It's another 'stealth' tax from Brown and his idiotic cronies that enables decent people in decent areas to be yet again clobbered. These good people - Brown's 'easy touches'- will no doubt be expected to cough up the £100 fine while all the old dossers will just dump it. Trouble is, what if they dump it outside someone else's house? Like everything else Labour thinks up, again it's unworkable, pathetic and further punishment for families, who obviously put out more rubbish.
- Colin, Wanstead
As a single person without children, all I get for my council tax is my rubbish collected. Now there are proposals to bully beleagured taxpayers even more by introducing more taxes to get my rubbish collected! And I live in a flat too!
- Jill, Teddington, UK
Nu Labor, Crash Gordon: go away!
- Jacqueline, Hampstead, London
Recycling anything other than metal (and possibly certain plastics) uses far more engergy and causes far more environmental damage than not recycling it.
Recycled paper is poor quality and cannot be given away, whereas using virgin paper from your typical managed tree farm causes more trees to be planted. Glass is made from the most abundant material on earth and if you smash it up and throw it into the sea it turns back into that material to be used again.
Punishing those of us who have studied the issue rather than jumped on a bandwagon is draconian idiocy.
Why can't our rubbish therefore be collected and used to fuel power stations instead?
It seems bizarre that we have landfill problems and an electricity generating shortage, yet nobody in power has the wit to just burn our rubbish and solve both problems.
- Niall, London
It seems like the government is really trying to fill their coffers early. Yet another tax for living. Why don't they just live in our houses and tell us how much toilet paper we should be using for every wipe? I fully agree with recycling and do it myself (and encourage my children too). We should do our bit for the world, but taxing us is not the way to go. I can see a lot of bogus refuse companies and illegal fly-tipping on the horizon if they start with this nonsense.
- Irvin, Wandsworth, London
No problem with pay and throw as long as the council tax is eventually reduced to reflect the reduced number of collections and fewer bin men that will inevitably be employed if this is a success. Why not also fine the supermarkets and shops for the excessive amount of wrapping that is not needed on products. On a takeaway pasta meal you get a sealed oven proof tray inside a cardboard box. Why not put in a see through strong plastic bag that is bio degradable.
- Den, London
Just tell them no...enough is enough, they can't jail us all.
- Soho, London SW1
In Luxembourg we have a large recycling centre where we have to take our plastic, bottles, cardboard, paper and metals. As a result we have half a bag of rubbish a week to put in the actual bin.
Why not give over the forecourts of petrol stations and creators of rubbish supermarkets to recycling mega boxes for urban centres.
- Anna, Luxembourg
I think it's about time that we reduced the number of MPs and local councillors by 50%. That should reduce all the hot air by half, thereby reducing global warming at a stroke!
We are totally over-governed. They have nothing at all to do with their time, and just keep on looking for ways to raise taxes to pay for their inflated salary increases and expense accounts.
All govenment should be responsible for is making sure the streets are clean and keeping the street lights working. Enough of the Nanny State! We don't need them.
- Haskey, London SE1
What a difference between the political methods of making us re-cycle and the real world alternative...!
Tesco want me to put my plastics etc in a big machine at their shop and in return they give me points on their reward scheme and I get a discount on my shopping!
Our political masters want to fine us and send in enforcement teams to make us re-cycle...!
When did we become a dictatorship? Guess who I am not voting for next time I get a chance?
- Dene Wood, Grays, Essex,
I think that shops should be fined for excessive packaging, it is all very well expecting us to recycle, but the amount of packaging on everyday items is ludicrous.
- Kfc, Hertfordshire, UK
While I fully support the concept of recycling, the way it is currently done is a disaster as evidenced by our litter-strewn streets. Once unscrupulous people start fly-tipping to avoid penalties, it will become far worse. I'd much prefer clean streets and a few landfill sites. At present people don't even know what day the collectors will really come, so bags end up getting split and spilled everywhere. We need more thought before action, and a man to clear up the streets on collection day.
- Martin H. Watson, Teddington
