The great bin debate

As many of you may already know, the government has recently announced that they will be considering introducing a tax on how much rubbish we throw away. We have already seen a war between local councils and their residents about introducing fortnightly bin collections. Now it seems there is going to be another fight regarding taxing based on what we throw away.

The question is, is another tax the right way to go about things and will it really increase recycling?

I think one of the major problems with this announcement is that enough facts about what is actually going to happen aren't being made available. When the idea of the tax was originally announced some time ago, the government pointed out that you would be given an allowance connected to how much you threw away. If you stay within this you won't be charged any extra however if you are significantly below it then you would get a refund on part of your council tax as a kind of way of saying thank you for recycling as much as possible. Whether this will be how it works in reality we will have to wait and see.

I think if this is brought in without some proper thought then it could cause more problems than it solves. For a start you'll probably see an increase in fly tipping of general household waste, there may also be issues as regards to people putting their rubbish in other peoples bins to avoid being charged. None of these problems as of yet seem to have been addressed in anyway.

Time and money would be better spent finding out why people are creating so much waste in the first place and coming up with a solution to this problem rather than charging people for something they might not have that much control over. If it turns out that the only reason is because people are lazy and can not be bothered to recycle then fair enough charge them. Once they start feeling it hurt them in their pocket they will soon start to recycle more. However if there are genuine reasons why a family produces a lot of waste then maybe that reason should be addressed instead of a tax being pushed upon them.

It would be quite interesting to do a survey of life style against the amount of rubbish being thrown away to see if other things like health could be directly linked to it. For example a family that survives entirely on microwave meals is likely to throw away more packaging than a family that makes their meals from fresh ingredients. Fair enough most of the boxes for the meals could be recycled however a lot of the microwavable trays can not, or if they can I am yet to find somewhere they can be taken to be recycled. As everyone is being constantly told all these ready meals are full of too much this and that, that generally degrade our health, so does a family or individual that produces a lot of rubbish also have a life style that is likely be make them more unhealthy?

This could be classed as a controversial question but I hope you read it for what it is and not as an attack on people who eat microwave meals.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you go to your local supermarket and buy fresh fuit and veg along with the odd tin of this and that you're probably going to be able to recycle most of the packaging and waste produced by that meal. However if you buy ready cooked meals that are packaged in wax coated carboard boxes with plastic trays you're less likely to be able to recycle the packaging.

And so we come to the real cause of the problem, the super markets. These huge companies govern pretty much everything we buy as far as food is concerned, so surely it should be their responsibility to make sure that we never have to take home excessive amounts of packaging that we later have to dispose of. Maybe the government should be putting more pressure on these waste producers rather than the people who are essentially disposing of it for them.

If you're thinking of reducing your waste then why not take a look at some of my other articles on the subject.

When I started recycling
Composting
Organic Fruit and Veg Delivery