Should we 'pay as we throw'?

So let me get this right: if you get rid of your rubbish by putting it in the bin, you get charged extra.

If you get rid of it by fly-tipping, then you avoid the charges.

Yeah, that will work well.

This will lead to fly-tipping increases and more folk will do what I do, burn rubbish in the back garden. Not PC, but I don't care! I'm fed up of living in this fascist state controlled 'westworld'.

I would be more than happy to "pay as you throw" if it meant a reduction in my council tax bill.

But once you have put your bin out what would stop your neighbours from putting their own waste in it?

One way they could encourage recycling is to make it free for businesses to recycle things. I'm not sure how widely known this is, but although most councils offer recycling for residential waste as a free service, businesses have to pay if they want their waste to be recycled.

At my company, all our waste goes into landfill, because it simply doesn't make business sense to pay extra for recycling.

Councils need to think about what their priorities are: hitting their landfill targets or continuing to treat small businesses as cash cows to be milked at every opportunity.

We already pay as we throw. It's called council tax. And it's quite high.

If they do introduce pay as you throw, then the bin collection part of the council tax should be removed. Otherwise it will just be seen as another revenue raising scam.
Another problem would be increased fly tipping and people dumping their rubbish in other peoples bins. Next it will be padlocks and cctv cameras protecting our rubbish. An unworkable idea so it must be true.

Yes, we need to do something to reduce landfill, but this is so clearly not the way to do it. All this will encourage is fly tipping or putting your rubbish in your neighbours bin, why can't councils see this? Probably because its just another way to raise tax. If the incentive is to encourage more recycling, why not actually improve those facilities. I recently moved from a council area which would collect pretty much anything to recycle to a council (very nearby) that only collects the minimum (glass, paper, plastic, cans) - why can't I recycle cardboard??? Until councils are doing all they can, they should not be allowed to implement this. We already pay for rubbish to be taken away in council tax, unless that is reduced they can't do this.

This will help the environment but we all know the councils can't be trusted to stop here. It will go from incentives to fines to trying to force people to only eat certain foods or buy certain things. Also are they going to take into account the fact that larger households produce more rubbish, we recycled everything we could in my student house (the girls even tried to recycle some stuff we couldn't because we didn't realise) but as there were 5 adults with frequent guests we just produced a lot of rubbish too much to go int he bin sometimes. The councils will do thing like not allow people who throw away too much foster kids that sort of thing, a councils job is too collect the bins and keep the streets pavements and roads maintained and they can barely do that.

On the plus side as they can't even keep the roads maintained this system could collapse in a week.

Council tax has doubled under Labour. The roads are full of pot holes, council leaders get obscene salaries and now they want you to pay extra to have your rubbish collected. What has happened to this country over the last 12 years?

Speaking personally, I would be quite happy with this scheme, as there are only two people in my household, and we actually throw out very little. We have fortnightly bin collections in this area, and usually our bin is less then half full on collection days.
Households with large families could well struggle however, and allowances should be made according to the number of people who are living at any one address. There could also be a problem with people putting extra rubbish into a neighbours bin to gain some advantage for themselves. Are councils going to offer us padlocks to prevent this problem? This scheme is not so simple as it appears at first.

Sorry have I missed something? What am I paying large amounts of council tax for? am I going to have to pay twice for councils to get the job done. I am still trying to get ride of the Christmas rubbish because the council could get to the houses in my area because of the snow! it took them over a month to collect some of it and have only come to collect twice sine this Monday will be the 3rd time they have collect rubbish from us since Christmas. So no I will not and refuse to pay anymore to remove my rubbish if I have to I will burn it all in my garden or take it to the nearest public bin

If councils are adamant they want to go this way then do the job properly. Firstly, reduce Council Tax by the amount it costs for refuse collection, then charge for collection. If I dont have any rubbish I should pay nothing, not a fixed charge irrespective of what I have to be collected. Also, the Councils must be prepared to collect everything, not just what they want and expect us to find a way of disposing of the rest. In my area they dont collect bottles, you have to take them to the bottle bank yourself.

Maybe I've lived in London too long but surely this will result in people just chucking their rubbish in the local park or just putting it in the bin next to theirs. I can't see how this system can ever be robust and generally free from abuse.

we already do pay large amounts of money for this, it is called council tax. £1200 a year, and my bin is emptied once a fortnight.

I would be happy for a reduction in council tax, and then pay for rubbish disposal separately.

Why don'tthey tackle the real problems -if we are filling up land fill sites too quickly, it's because we have too many people in this country and goods come with excess packaging.

The proposals are typical of the low grade politcians we have running the country these days!

I can see fly-tipping becoming the number one offence in this country if they go ahead with this.

I'm sorry but surly the lid on the bin would have to have some sort of swipe card on it? what's stopping my neighbour putting rubbish in my bin when it's out for collection?

Absolutely barmy. And surely that's what we pay council tax for?

I am weary of this sort of endless nonsense that pours forth from government. Need I say more?

This is a huge waste of money and it will cost a great deal of money for a fractional increase in the recycling rate. People don't need incentives, they support recycling. This looks as if some Councils are at war with their residents. The Govt. have enabled this but I suspect only as a new form of stealth tax, what appears to me to be another deception of the electorate by making some thing very simple into something complicated and obscure. The initiative should have been for more sorting plants, because the technology now exists to sort everything except food and garden waste.Even different types of plastics can be separated by using the refractive index from various light sources. The only waste which needs to be separated by residents is compostable waste and this is easily done. In my personal opinion this whole bin chip scheme has been thought up by out of date fuddy duddies who have no real idea of the sophistication of sorting technology and whose eyes lit up like cash register pound signs when they thought there was more stealth cash there for the grabbing.

No 1, why don't you read correctly, this scheme is NOT about fining people it is to identfy those who do not fill up their bins with items that can be recycled.

The majority of people are quite capable of separating rubbish and those who are but do not bother SHOULD be fined. There is no excuse.

To no 2, this is not about living in a Fascist state but about cutting down on waste. If you can drive somewhere to fly tip then you can drive to a recycling centre or the local tip.

I assume the reasons behind this are to get more people to recycle which is admirable but will ultimately be used as an additional tax.

In our house there is just me and my wife and we only produce a couple of bin bags full in a fortnight and everything else is composted or recycled but add in a couple of kids and the waste will soon increase and seems unfair to charge families who may already be hard up.

Surely a fairer system would be rebate for those who recycle the majority of their waste?

Ok pay more for rubbish being moved or do I dig a hole in my garden put food waste in it cover with soil so it rots and burn the plastic and paper I think I'll burn and bury my rubbish then pay any more then I need too! I can't afford to pay out out any way.

Will our Council Tax be reduced by the amount allocated to refuse collection? I doubt it!

theres already a lot of fly tipping there are two areas within a mile of each other by me thats filled with rubbish but the council refuses to do any thing about it despite loads of complaints so why should we pay any more tax. Get stuffed.

I have no problem with the idea of "pay as you throw" - BUT, with one very important proviso:

That the part of my council tax that I pay for rubbish collection is removed ( i.e. that I'm not charged twice for the same service ).

Aside from the obvious fact that we are already paying for the dubious privilege of dustcarts obstructing our travel to work, it would seem reasonable if we had the right to choose what rubbish is inflicted on us.
The supermarkets made a big noise about doing away with carrier bags, while putting more and more produce into individual wrappings. And few of us have the choice of not using a supermarket available to us these days.
The government turned down a petition demanding that it should be obligatory for doorstep deliveries of all kinds to heed notices requesting no junk mail.
The 3 charity bags I get each week all promise to collect the bag, full or empty, but they never bother with the empty ones, which become more landfill.
This seemingly hare-brained idea has no real desire to reduce the amount of landfill. It's all about generating more revenue for these inefficient and incompetent councils

"Bin Tax is a good idea ???? When they scrap the Council tax? not more charges Whats next air tax? The council tax is too much to pay for the services if there are any? now after all the uncalled for cuts, and its very unfair to most small business and low -wage house holds',But why the buy to let landlords dont' pay a penny? in Council Tax is it because many councilors, and M.P.S, in power have many propertys'?

Hmm... this will work well...

My council has seen fit to give 2 black bins and 2 green bins to a building with 4 flats in it, with a total of 10 people living in the building.

We have repeatedly asked for new bins, to no avail.

If the council think they are going to charge me money for waste, I will simply dump it in the street.

When I do my shopping I am always left with loads of extra, unwanted and un-needed packaging. Why should I pay MORE for that to be collected?! I'm not going out of my way to buy the things with the most wrapping!!

They should target the source of the waste and not us!

Also, agree 100% that unless there is a reduction of my council tax then there will be more fly-tipping and personal waste burning.

Election now? No thanks, REVLOUTION NOW (or at least, a vote of no confidence for these people who are clearly well out of touch with reality).

Pay-As-You-Throw is a fair idea, but it is fraut with dangers in bad neighbourhoods.

There are those who would throw their own rubbish into other people's bins, those who fly tip instead, those who deliberately cause conflict between neighbours by manipulating contents in bins, and those who make bins disappear.

I dread the day when this comes my way.

if they want to stop rubbish maybe the council should tackle companies who over package items! why do packed of biscuits need to be boxed as well as put in to trays and wrapped with plastic wrappers. is it me or is that just two much waste? why dont we stop filling shelf's in shopes with pointless items like room freshener there are hundreds of different kinds but all have the same smell! its crazy! if they want to to stop waste stop making pointless rubbish.

My local council (east lothian) already charges £22.50 if you want to have an extra lift , max 6 bags , according to them waste disposal is not covered by council tax , chipping bins will be used against you . This country has already shown total disregard for the people who do the voting , like everything else charges will be sneaked in , the only way to get ahead would seem to be become an mp then you pay for nothing while raping public funds

On the face of it pay-as-you-throw would appear to be fair and equitable.

However, the reality is very different.

For example, exactly how will council’s going to contend with rubbish being added say, to a neighbour’s bin as it sits on a public street awaiting collection?

What about disputes in respect of the disparity between resident’s ‘rubbish weight’ measurements and those from the council’s equipment?

Then there are issues such as it being cheaper to fly-tip a single heavy item of rubbish (or drop it in the nearest litter bin) rather than the household waste? It would be easy to get into the routine of quietly dropping a carrier bag of unattributable household waste in a litter bin on the walk into town.

Rather than concentrate of charging regimes concentrate on making recycling simpler so it becomes just as easy to throw an item into a recycling bin as a waste bin.

If recycling is made easy people will do it without being forced through dubious charging regimes with the ensuing need to resource both that charging regime and its complaints & disputes resolution system.

I've got 3 points to make:

1. I already pay through my Council taxes so does this mean I'll be paying twice?

2. Immediately after the Land Fill TAX was introduced there was an increase in fly tipping - isn't this going to do the same?

3. Why doesn't the Government legislate against unnecessary packaging!

"9. At 11:58am on 05 Mar 2010, John Sparks wrote:

Council tax has doubled under Labour. The roads are full of pot holes, council leaders get obscene salaries and now they want you to pay extra to have your rubbish collected. What has happened to this country over the last 12 years?"


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Thatcherism carried on despite people voting for a Labour government.

"Councils say the chips simply identify the house a bin belongs to and may be used to offer incentives - not fines. A voluntary scheme is being set up in Bristol to reward people who cut waste."
They must think I fell out of a tree! Do Council officials really expect me to believe that this is about helping me and not controlling me? How long before fines come in - not to punish, of course; just simply to help.
Councils nationwide have blown it big time on this issue of rubbish. They have proposed scheme after scheme, none of which have been well received because the public has seen right through them. And guess what - we already pay to have our rubbish collected on a weekly basis, so if you're going to change the process start changing the cost - then you might get a positive hearing.
As the saying goes (polite version), "Couldn't organise a booze up in a brewery". But what more should we expect from £200,000 plus per annum chief execs surrounded by staff with gold plated pensions?

We live on a side road just off a major A road in kent, we are the first side road after leaving a small town, and drivers can easily turn down our road and rejoin the A road further on.

We already half a dozen fly tippers dropping their domestic rubish over our hedge, usually as the leave for holiday.

Given that as its on private land the council whant nothing to do with it and the police will not even give us crime report numbers.

This is only going to push up the number of times I have to take other peoples black sacks to the local tip.

"John Sparks wrote:
Council tax has doubled under Labour. The roads are full of pot holes, council leaders get obscene salaries and now they want you to pay extra to have your rubbish collected. What has happened to this country over the last 12 years?"

Well, the GDP has also doubled under Labour and doubtless for those who have records going back that far, the council tax for a property in 1997 was probably at least double what the rates bill were for it in 1984. So, your point is what exactly? Many will point to a similar degradation of council services in that period such as not having to put your bin out on the driveway as the binmen would collect it for you.

20. At 12:09pm on 05 Mar 2010, blynnog wrote:

No 1, why don't you read correctly, this scheme is NOT about fining people it is to identfy those who do not fill up their bins with items that can be recycled.

The majority of people are quite capable of separating rubbish and those who are but do not bother SHOULD be fined. There is no excuse.

To no 2, this is not about living in a Fascist state but about cutting down on waste. If you can drive somewhere to fly tip then you can drive to a recycling centre or the local tip.

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This scheme not turning into fines is a great pipe dream. Unfortunately you have been sleeping over the last 12 yearswhere we all prospered until the recession and yet public sector prices increase with a huge decrease in productivity and service.

You statement about flytipping being able to go to recycling center. Good pipe dream again but obviously that isnt what is happening. People fly tip now, never mind if their bins are monitored. People put stuff in neighbours bins because theirs are full and if its over an inch open the bin men wont collect it!

The councils should make themselves more efficient and fix their services before designing these schemes

Our household recycles as much as we can, we really make an effort to do so, because we believe it to be for the better. We throw away very little. Of course, if this scheme happens, once we put out our semi-empty bin, some of our less civilized neighbours will toss their own excess rubbish in it. I don't feel like paying fines for someone elses rubbish, so I shall instantly stop recycling. I'd rather pay for my own mess.

I already recycle paper, plastic, glass and metal. All that goes in my waste bin is unrecyclable. If I am to be charged by weight then I will start to have new fuel for my coal fire - anything that will burn will go up the chimney. If councils are short of cash then scrap the final salary pension schemes.

Loads of deserted country lanes near me

Cut out the part of the council tax bill that covers waste collection then yea, charge me for "pay as you throw" as much as you like. I will however, just get rid of all my rubbish another way, as will alot of people I would guess.

I throw away very little but would be opposed to this. Local Authorities are supposed to provide a public service but behave more and more a little Hitlers, aided and abetted by the EU. They have a legal responsibility under Statute to clear the rubbish. Council Tax is already exhorbitant yet they dream up ever more ingenious ways of milking the tax payer.
I burn a certain amount of card and paper waste and wood. With gas prices having soared it makes sense to use the fireplace.

You only have to look around the country to see the escalation in fly tipping over the past few years with the advent of landfill tax, and the majority of it goes undetected.

If we get much more of this bureaucracy I foresee some councillors paying extra for full bins or being fined for putting the wrong waste in their recycling bins as locals adopt their own recycling agenda and program.

Yet another stealth tax encouraged and enabled by this dreadful Labour Government. For some people rubbish collection is the only direct service they receive in return for council tax.
Whenever I hear some green justification for a proposal I hang onto my wallet. The related proposal of fortnightly collections is being pushed by the Audit Commission and who is behind them - Gordon.

The real answer is to force all manufacturers to use recyclable packaging. To charge consumers for disposal on a per-weight basis is just to encourage fly-tipping. If the councils want our countryside to be tuned into one big rubbish dump then they know what to do.

Why not - we are already taxed for air, birth, marriage, travel, eating, and enjoyment - why not add a shiny new tax for rubbish!

It will not work, particularly in high density areas where bins are out on the street. People will put rubbish in any bin that has space, irrespective of whether that bin is theirs. Indeed over Christmas when my neighbours where away I used their bin as there was no space left in mine.
It will also encourage fly tipping. It will also encourage people to dump waste in waste bins in town rather than in their bins at home.
I find it extremely irritating that something the majority don't want is being imposed on me. I would vote for any party that promised not to introduce it, but unfortunately the pressure for it is coming from Central Government and our views will be ignored.

Where I live in Waltham Forest you are very lucky if the recycling contractor even takes ALL the items they are SUPPOSED to! It's not unusual to find they have only emptied HALF the recycle bin for example, they have taken the plastic items, the papers and some of the glass and left the cardboard, the tins and the remaining glass behind, which rather suggests 'selective' recycling.
My understanding is that we already paid for these items to be recycled in our council taxes. But what is the point in us trying to do what is required of us, if the people who are PAID to recycle it on the councils behalf just can't be bothered?
Now it would seem we are also going to be penalised if the non recyleable items are 'more than I am allowed' to dispose of as refuse! How is this possible when I already pay my council tax (UP FRONT!)in order for them to do their jobs?
If I only did half my job I would receive half the pay or more likely find myself with no job, so what's the difference, of course I am not a public sector worker!
Why don't they spend more time catching and prosecuting the 'regular' fly tippers (there are several of these in my street!), fine Landlords if they haven't requested sufficient wheelie bins for their tenants and 'police' their own 'contractors' to ensure they actually carry out their agreed remit and 'fine' them if they fail to do so.
What we DON'T want is even more unjust charges aimed at the already struggling (as we ARE in a recession!) householders, who quite rightly expect their weekely refuse TO BE TAKEN AWAY by the refuse collectors each week (or in some places, every other week)!
As someone else has already observed here, if we are to be 'charged' (twice) to remove our houshold refuse then more and more people will start to flytip. Which of course is VERY green (probably after 2 or 3 days as it all turns mouldy and the rats and the flies appear!)
Is it possible that someone in the council has misunderstood what being green actually stands for?!!

My council still supply black bags so I assume we will not be chipped.
We only have boxes for bottles and papers at the moment, they are supposed to be giving out more containers to recycle more items including food and they hope to reduce the black bags by people recycling my main problem is they will not give us Wheely bins although they have given them to some areas within the same council area, they will collect the recyclable items once a week and the black bags every fortnight.

We carefully recycle everything that we can (there are many plastic trays and wrappers that cannot currently be recycled), compost peelings etc and have very little food waste. We are therefore doing our bit to enable the council to meet recycling targets and minimise landfill which reduces the cost of refuse disposal. However, although our actions help reduce cost to the council we see no benefit for our efforts compared to a family who simply dump everything in one bin.
However, charging directly would undoubtedly increase fly tipping so the idea of vouchers based on recycling seems like the best option.

Looking at the web site for a place in america that I visited last week, things are different there. Electric, gas and water are from monopoly suppliers and the council provide the sewerage. However, the householder must make their own arrangements for refuse collection. I assume that this allows them to take their rubbish direct to the tip if that's cheaper. Wouldn't work here of course.

Surely government should legislate to reduce the amount of waste which cannot be recycled.
Make it illegal to sell plastic bottles would be a start. Glass bottles with a small deposit would remove millions of tons of non-degradable waste.
Oregon did this in the'90s to remove waste and it worked, create jobs too.
If government sets the framework, people will accept change but without it people will feel they are being victimised.
Big business will scream and shout but they did this over removing lead from petrol and removing asbestos from brake linings but soon caved in when they saw that political and public opinion was against them.

By the time they have given exemption to anyone who has children and anyone on benefits, the people that pay will be middle income single people and childless couples. i.e. those that produce the least rubbish anyway and are already taxed to death.

Just yet another revenue raiser!

If councils were serious about this, the would address the causes of excessive waste:

Supermarkets selling food with too-short use-by dates.
Supermarkets not offering smaller packages for single people and retired couples.
Supermarkets over-packaging with non-recyclable materials.

I support this 100% provided the cost of Rubbish disposal is taken off the rates.

Another consequence of dis-jointed government. How about 1st saving by establishing a uniform waste collection and recycle system! Not the hotch potch it is currently. How does additional monitoring save money?
Yet more expenditure, administration / technology.

Reduce collection costs? How?

There is an expected duty of the government regarding Health and Hygiene.

What else is council tax used for? I thought that some of it was for waste disposal. Or am I wrong here? I think that perhaps more could be put in the 'recycling' bin, than actually is (in my area anyway).

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I understand that this is designed to help councils reward people for recycling. Like most schemes that are started with good intentions it will soon become a cash cow to be milked until we the people without expense accounts are squeezed dry.

What exactly do we pay council tax for? I don't really want to live in a culture which thinks the answer to environmental problems is to put spy chips in peoples bins.

hmm, I'm all for recycling, I recycle as much as I can, but a pay as you throw system would be flawed.

For a start it will penalise larger households/families, who have more rubbish, therefore heavier bins. There would be nothing to stop neighbours putting their rubbish in your bins. It could also encourage fly tipping. Also, surely a lot of the pressure should be on manufacturers who produce lots of packaging.


Also, until all councils increase the material they take, it would not be fair for all, especially the elderly. My mum doesn't drive and lives alone and on the outskirts of a rural town. Her council doesn't take glass recycling. The nearest glass recycling place is over 1.5 miles away. Surely she can't be expected to carry her glass that far? Yet if she throws it away will she be penalised. Which in affect will be being penalised for not having a car (which in itself is environmentally friendly).

Well, since seeing the report this morning on the news, I have just found the same 'chip' on our bin. No-one has told us that there are chips on our bins? Oh and I have just removed it. That would mean we would get a reduction in council tax, right?. I don't think it will.
If you cut services that we as council tax payers, pay for, then we should get a reduction in council tax. I am not paying council tax in order to pay off mismanagement of council funds. That should first and foremost be paid off by the people that calculated the annual budget, by being sacked.

Let's see:

South Somerset District Council has only 2 police officers on duty, and they cover 200 square miles on bank holidays. The Ilminster cop shop is only open from 9-5. I know all this because I got burgled and the cops said they could do absolutely nothing about it.

The same council refuses to fix a "fives" wall, which is part of English heritage and is going to eventually collapse on my next door neighbours house.

My wife and myself were iced in for 1 week as the council refused to grit the road, and as my wife is self employed she lost 6 days of income.

I had to get my tracking on my car reset, as my nearside tire vanished down a pothole, that cost me £25.

The same useless council refuses to recycle plastic so I still have to go to a recycling point anyway, so what the hell is the point of the council doing it?!? And to make things worse, they pay farmers to "redistribute" land fill rubbish on their farms, thereby conforming to EU Legislation about land fill sites.

The whole concept of South Somerset Council and it's tax rules are just simply not fit for purpose any more! If they then charge for pay-as-you-go rubbish, I for one feel that is the last straw. I would rather go to prison, than pay for it...again!

Am I the only person that has the cr*p1est council in England? Has anybody else had the same level of disappointment?

I haven't read through the above comments so I don't know if anybody else has said this - why not ensure surermarkets/manufacturers don't use unnecesary packaging?

It would be very interesting to see a pilot study on this - most people are pro recycling but recycling bins do not accept most of what is thrown out, many people do not have access to recycling facilities.

What should be targeted is the source of the problem; excess packaging and rubbish that is not biodegradable.

Chipping bins will not solve the problems we have with waste.

This is Big Brother gone completely mad. I paid council tax so I expect a service from the Bin men. My council doesn't have those terrible wheelie Bins and we get weekly collections. The system that delieves this service doesn't need to be changed. So, Gordon Brown, leave this well alone. If there is no landfill then it could be burned.

I'd hope there would be pressure on councils to provide consistant recycling facilities and collections before pressure is put on residents to recycle.
Our council refuses to provide recycling bins and collections to our part of the street, like many other areas, even though only 200m away from us on a wealthier street these services are provided. We already do "our bit" for the environment by not owning a car - and so the only way for us to recycle would be to carry our rubbish for a mile to the supermarket's overflowing recycling bins.
Council's ought to sort out their collections and facilities before starting to think about penalising their residents for not recycling.

Ridiculous idea. As other posters have said, we already pay for rubbish collections through our council tax. The thing that annoys me everytime I hear that 'households need to reduce waste and recycle further', is that our family already recycle as much as we are allowed!! Councils need to reduce the restrictions on what you can recycle. Yoghurt pots, plastic containers meat comes in, shampoo bottles all sorts of stuff you aren't allowed to recycle which then all have to then go in the trash. How can we recycle more when all you can put in the recycle wheely bin is paper, plastic bottles and cans mostly?

No problem if we start to see a saving from it - if they start charging on what they already charge they'll be going back to the poll tax days. If they hike up my council tax again this year I'm tempted to not pay as it is.

If Councils introduce pay-as-you-throw schemes, whether this is in addition to Council Tax or comes with a reduction in C Tax, the result will simply be that private companies will spring up to offer their own rubbish collection services to the public for far cheaper (because ALL private companies are at least 1000% more efficient than the public sector so they can charge less) and the Councils will have shot themselves in the foot.

"At 11:58am on 05 Mar 2010, John Sparks wrote:
Council tax has doubled under Labour. The roads are full of pot holes, council leaders get obscene salaries and now they want you to pay extra to have your rubbish collected. What has happened to this country over the last 12 years?"

In case you'd missed it, Labour continued with the Free Market reforms begun by Thatcher 30 years ago (as that's how they became electable again) and, by deregulating the Financial Markets as part of that process, ensured that a big boom would be followed by a big bust.

Yet another "fine" for having a family as you produce more rubbish with four people than with two. If we continue to offend by having children will they send us to prison?

The amount of waste I send to landfill from the normal household waste is very minimal, mainly pastic and other packaging used for food.

I recycle and compost as much as I possibly can and things that can be reused either go on Ebay, charity shops or onto my local Freecycle group.

We have plastic sacks in Pembrokeshire (Council too tight for wheely bins!) and I put a black sack out to landfill, every 2 or 3 weeks and it weighs no more than a couple of pounds and in windy weather, it can blow up the street.

I would be happy to pay as you throw as there are some housholds that have many sacks and don't bother to recycle.

The ideal way would be to pay for landfill, but get credit for what we recycle.

My attitude is that there is NO excuse not to recycle as we are happy to take the items into the house, so we must dispose of it by the necessary means to keep down the amount that goes to landfill.

If we had an incinerator, even less waste would go to landfill and it would produce heat for nearby homes ....

I thought thats what council tax was for.

You know the thing thats doubled in the last 10 years to [pay for rubbish collection which is now done half as often


The flaws are well known it will lead to fly tipping n illegal dumping it isnt fair on big families etc. However the councils will no doubt go ahead anyway

Councils for some time been on a mission to extort ever more money out of the citizens not only by council tax but by draconian parking regimes, inventing new offences like leaving your engine switched on when your stationary


They are also on a mission to offer ever worse services ---they spend less on roads, less on rubbish collection than ever before.

With the forthcoming squeeze on public spending they will all go for this

at the same time councils refused a FOI request to know the details of all those paid more than 50 K cos "it could lead to attacks from the less stable members of the community" which is as good as admitting that if we knew how our money was spent wed get violent

The bottom line now is that councils think we exist for their convenience and view anything they have to do for us as an irritant


In another 10 years throwing out rubbish will be a criminal offence enforced by cctv, conjestion charging will be applied for walking on the pavements, Parking will be made illegal and an automatic fine levied

The will continue to do this until we actually rebel against them

If this is ultimately to cut down on the amount of waste that goes to landfill, then surely they are targeting the wrong people. They should be targeting the suppliers who actually provide the rubbish we throw away, namely the supermarkets.
Which by the way they will not do, as there is no incentive for the councils. Until supermarkets and the people that provide the packaging are not dealt with, with laws, then this will carry on, and on.
If the Government and Councils are serious about 'green' issues, then clearly they need to deal with the above. And NO, supermarkets are not doing a good job or enough on this either.

45 - "For some people rubbish collection is the only direct service they receive in return for council tax."

What about street lighting, cleaning, upkeep of parks, communal areas, cycle lanes, the police and everything else that CT pays for?

Some people aren't happy unless they are complaining - perhaps we should return to Victorian England where we threw rubbish out of a window into the streets.

I do pay as I throw. I buy a years worth of rubbish collection within my council tax bill and it gets picked up once a week. Anything else is just a nonsense.

Bring it on! Nowhere in anything I have heard or read today proves that we will be charged in any way for the amount of rubbish we put out. I recycle and therefore hardly put out any rubbish, I say bring it on, I will take the incentive payment please, where do I sign up!

Household waste in England now totals 24.2 million tonnes per year and waste collection costs local government authorities £1.8 billion every year [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]. The government's response to this is to put spy chips into 2.5 million bins to find out how much we are throwing away, or to threaten the country with pay as you throw. What the government should be doing is encouraging supermarkets to use less packaging and as consumers we should leave excess packaging at the stores, as the Jury Team propose https://www.juryteam.org.

At least 28 other countries have 'take back laws' which require supermarkets to take back any excessive packaging. These laws encourage supermarkets when they are in the design phase of their products to use materials which are recyclable [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]. If implemented in this country, we would see a shift of the burden of waste from the consumer to the retailer. Which would mean there would be need no for spy chips in bins.

Putting 'spy chips' in peoples bins will have no affect on the amount of rubbish local government authorities have to deal with. All this will do is encourage members of the public to use their neighbours bins, or we will see a increase in fly tipping, which will cause the environment even more damage. What we need to see is the supermarkets taking more responsibility for the rubbish they are creating, a policy the Jury Team fully supports.

Yes.

I'll throw the little rubish I have into my neighbour's bin and they'll pay.
After all, they are out at the time the bin lorry arrives and I am at home.

....the foolocracys' remains.

If I ever find a microchip in my bin, it's going straight in the bin!

No.

If you read the various literature on this subject it is often worded ‘To charge households for the rubbish they produce’!

I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t produce rubbish, I simply discard the rubbish I am given whenever I want to buy the simplest item or it is shoved through my letter box.

I am all for recycling and I am proud to say that the actual rubbish I put in my waste bin is minimal although to achieve this I still have to take some items to various recycling centres as my kerb side collection does not do it, like Drink Cartons and plastics other than drink bottles, Low Energy light bulbs etc although I am pleased to see I can now take my dead batteries back to a store.

The problem is, our lazy (getting a 1.5% pay rise) MP’s are not doing enough to stem the type of rubbish we are given.

Instead, as is the way government works in this country our Ministers set a policy and then they charge their agents, in this case the Councils to achieve that policy whilst do nothing themselves to help solve the problems Councils face, instead opting to fine Councils (us) £40 per ton of rubbish that goes into landfill, yet Councils cannot legislate how goods must be packed or to ban packing materials such as Polystyrene.

Let me give you an example.

At the weekend I bought a bench grinder. It came in a cardboard box 15inches square by 9 deep and the grinder was held in place by a polystyrene form of the same size as the box. The cardboard box will recycle, but what of the polystyrene it will go in my waste bin for landfill. Why couldn’t the form be made of cardboard?

Now extend the argument back to the factory. Unless the form was made at the point of packing then somewhere there are lorries carrying what is effectively air around our roads somewhere.

If the form was made of cardboard, they could be flat packed and you could probably get an equivalent load of polystyrene forms on three or four pallets.

Finally, my only object to recycling is the time and effort it takes me and given there are two million plus unemployed in this country I believe it would better for the country to pay an extra amount of tax / VAT and pay for people to sort our rubbish at waste sites and yes, if I was unemployed I would do it!

What possible difference does the mass of the waste in your bin make in reference to the volume of space available in landfill? Surely it is the volume of waste we throw away that is the important factor. And, funnily enough, we already have a clue as to the volume being collected - it is roughly wheelie-bin sized. No need to waste our money on some high-tech solution.

Why is rubbish collection always such an issue and why are there never any sensible solutions. We always seem to get new little boxes or sacks or different coloured wheelie bins and then something changes. I've no idea any more what I'm supposed to put in each one and judging by the fact that most of our little plastic collection boxes are half empty, my neighbours haven't a clue either. It needs to be simple and effective and we need to stop wasting time and money on silly plans that don't work and producing new containers that are never used.

Whilst this may work in countries which have embraced progressive taxation (i.e. rewarding "good" behaviour), we have a tax system which is entirely regressive (i.e. everyone pays the same regardless of "good" or "bad" behaviour). In this instance, they need to think very carefully before introducing schemes which are contrary to the taxpayer's way of thinking.

I like the idea of "pay as you throw" but, considering how little the British recycle (and how insulted we evidently get when such schemes are proposed), we need to change attitudes before changing the system. If people can clearly see the benefit of "pay as you throw", they will buy into it.

Once again the wrong people - us - are being penalised for waste.
Why doesn't this pathetic establishment penalise the ones actually causing the problem?
Fine a company for creating 4 layers of packaging. Stop a company from producing plastics when biodegradable products can be used instead. Prevent harmful chemicals from being used in product manufacture.
But will they do it? Will they do anything to their friends in big business?
We all know the answer. We'll get screwed again.

Don't understand why each time some wierd controlling initiative comes up people call it facist when really it's more like the loony left communists, either way it's daft and a waste of public money.

My bin is not the one I started with as depending on where the bin men leave them I get a random bin occasionally. Surely people will just leave their bin in the back garden and take another bin in the same area hostage and somebody else picks the bill up?

I also think that manufacturers and supermarkets must have some sort of regulation introduced that means they have to use certain packaging materials for various products.

Consumers don't get much choice in the matter in regards to how their products are packaged.

Do i get a rebate everytime my rubbish ISN'T collected? Unfortunately this happens far too often for my liking.....during the adverse weather fair enough but ithappens far too often

Cut costs, burn in the garden and burn quick before the council stasi interfere. Use oil, plastic or whatever, for a rapid fire. I used to care about the environment, protect oak trees and hedges, but our council had them removed for development. So now I am a true capitalist - look after myself first. Other people are already taking these individualistic steps - sports grounds, bridle paths, etc are all becoming waste tips. Give us back our local government, get rid of the councils.

"So let me get this right: if you get rid of your rubbish by putting it in the bin, you get charged extra.

If you get rid of it by fly-tipping, then you avoid the charges.

Yeah, that will work well."

That's a particularly unintelligent comment isnt it?

By the same logic you might as well say 'Supermarkets should give away food for free, because if people shop-lift and steal the food they would avoid the charges'.

Think....I know it's a tall order, but at least have a go......

I think it's a great idea!

If it's kept revenue neutral than it's simply a case of assigning the cost of rubbish collection services to those who use it.

Sure large families will have to pay proportionally more, but it is their choice to have a large family and they should be prepared to foot the bill to society for their choosing to have a large family.

"Council tax has doubled under Labour. The roads are full of pot holes, council leaders get obscene salaries and now they want you to pay extra to have your rubbish collected. What has happened to this country over the last 12 years?"

Firstly, council tax has not doubled since 1997. I paid £81 a month last year, and in 1997 I was paying about £60. Secondly, you'll find that the leaders of companies who make newspapers and TV shows get "obscene" salaries, but you still willingly buy their products. Thirdly, would YOU object if YOU were paid such a salary? Answer: No. Thirdly, what has happened to this country over the past 12 years? Well, unfortunately idiots like you have been given more and more scope to spout rubbish. Give it a year or so under Cameron and see if things are any different - what will you spout about then, Tory boy?

If you don't like it, leave.

I see alot of unsubstantiated facts on here. Alot of knee jerk reaction to stealth tax, Gordons tax, Inept Government, Country going to the dogs,Its not like what it used to be, the state of the roads etc..

Not one comment celebrating the fact we actually have recycling bins and rubbish collection?

Then we are never happiest as to when we are moaning.

In many many instances the cost of something depends on how much it is used or how big it is. The more petrol we use the more we pay, the more electricity we use the more we pay, the bigger the house the higher the cost, gas, water, food, travel etc etc. All depends on how much we use.

Why should disposing of rubbish be any different?

"Yet another "fine" for having a family as you produce more rubbish with four people than with two. If we continue to offend by having children will they send us to prison?"

If they grow up anything like you, then I would hope so.

Should we 'pay as we throw'?

NO, well not untill we have better door step recyialbe collections, I have 1 bag for paper, 1 bag for cardboard, box for glass, box for cans, bin for green waste, bin for everything else, no plasic recycling or other recycables, bags/boxes collected on different days etc.

Oh dear. Given that I can count the number of councils that have introduced this on the fingers of no hands, a couple of questions:
Who are/what is the Big Brother Watch Group? The Taxpayers Alliance by another name perhaps?
What is the methodolgy of their 'survey'? Scattergun FOI requests perhaps?
Why has the BBC given them credence, assuming of course that they have checked the group out and found them not to be a lonely, fulminating, crackpot, right wing, single issue fanatic with a serious keyboard habit?
Sigh...