« CPHRC gets its teeth into the Maldives | Main | Tension mounts in the stadium.. »

Comments

What a completely idiotic idea!! Surely it will only lead to increased fly tipping? What should be happening is the placing of incentives to encourage recycling. There will always however be items of waste which cannot be recycled and far better these go in dustbins in the normal way rather than being tipped into next door's garden or even left on the street.

I like the idea of a black bag tax but as said only as a self-defeating tax.

6 months ago I recycled nothing now at least 75% is recycled and I try and buy products that are packaged in recyclable materials.

Although I wasn't threatened with a new tax, I just got on with it.

The correct approach would be "rebalancing downward": an across-the-board cut in central grants and the taxes which fund them, with each council being free to make up the difference as its electorate decides.

Absolutely! But this seems unlikely under the current centralisers precisely because there are fewer and fewer Labour councillors.

I'm actually not opposed to the rubbish tax in principle, as I support a polluter pays approach. But - in practice is this really another stealth tax, what are the unintended consequences and just how much will this cost to adminster?

Of dear! We love the landfill directive, do we?

It would not surprise me to learn that Brown had decided, in some way, to tax us when we get into bed at night.

When they (the government) have spent millions on advertising this new idea - or made local councils spend it, and then found that available spaces in the countryside or the towns become targets of flytippers, and have to spend more millions, both clearing up the mess (or instructing councils to do it!), then spend more millions to think up another scheme, and advertise it, we can console ourselves that it is just OUR money that is being ...........

Unless the cost is offset by a reduction in council tax for waste disposal this would surely be just another stealth tax?

The principle is reasonable enough. I have looked at how they do this on the continent an it seems to work.

By making a tangiable link between the cost and the amount a household throws out they can decide for themselves. If people want to throw more out then by relaising the direct cost they may think again.

As for the fly tipping element I am more concerned. This would need greater consideration.

I do however think the whole 'pay by the weight' idea is rather unmanageable. In Europe if a bag doesn't have a official "to be collected" sticker on it it is not collected - stickers can be purcased for say 2euros from local shops in bulk - surely this is a more sensible approach?

Surely we should be incinerating more of our waste. Burning the waste would also produce electricity, and a filter would be added to remove harmful fumes?

A "Bed Tax"! What an ominous thought, Patsy! Particularly if he decided to tax us on whatever we might decide to do there....!!!!

I thought the Producer Responsibility (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997, superceded by the new consolidated Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2005, were meant to minimise the waste being produced, looking at how full my refuse bin gets I'm not sure that is the case.........and I do recycle as much as is reasonable to do. I suspect all these regulations have done is create a market/trade in packaging waste.

Interstingly if I was allowed to put envelopes and cardboard into my paper recycling bin ( collected monthly and always full), it would reduce the amount of rubbish that I do not recycle.

"A "Bed Tax"! What an ominous thought, Patsy! Particularly if he decided to tax us on whatever we might decide to do there....!!!!"
18:15

And there might be some who would be quite "proud" to paying a high rate of such a tax! ;) Makes you wonder how they might enforce it.....a bed tax inspector or CCTV !

It depends how far you want to take it, the Zurich authorities introduced a similar thing and cut waste disposal by half in a year. I remember reading this article (I recommend you read it too, if you're interested in this kind of thing!) in the IHT last year for some reason. They have a highly, highly regulated waste disposal system - I was very intrigued at the time.

To work well, it would take a lot of enforcing and regulating though. Fly-tippers have to be really cracked down on which isn't so easy on a national scale.

The Zurich trash program employs teams of inspectors who sift through sacks of illegal household garbage, looking for clues as to the culprit. Fines are as much as 260 Swiss francs - and that for a first offense.

Basically, they have Zuri-Sacks which are official bin bags which cost a few euros each, and are the only way you can get your rubbish collected (the average family now only throws away one bin bag a week). Added to that, they have a very complicated rubbish pick-up timetable for specific materials - which forces people to organise their waste well. The cost of rubbish disposal has led to companies like IKEA putting less unnecessary packaging in their products - due to popular demand.

Other systems in Europe include paying according to how much is in your garbage can.

I'm open minded about these things. If it encourages recycling and responsible use of resources I'm all for it (so long as it isn't balanced out by the resources used to regulate the system!).

i dont think the problem personally is anything to do with taxes or incentives. most of the time recycling is just not convenient or easy enough. you have to carry all the stuff to the nearest recycling point which is usually miles away. what they need to do is to give every household in the country a few boxes e.g. a red one for paper, a blue one for glass, a green one for plastic or whatever, e.t.c. and then the council should come round and collect them once a week or something like that. that will make recycling convenient and more people will be willing to recycle.

if that still did not cut it down enough, then they can think about charging for anything not recycled and take an average amount of the council tax bill as part of that.

Where does the packaging industry come into this lot eh? Who provides all the damn rubbish in the first place. Who asks for junk mail to be put through their letter box for them to chuck out? Tell you what. Stand beside your car in Tesco/ sainsburys/ Waitrose/ Somerfield/ delete as appropriate, rip off ALL the packaging, and leave it for THEM to deal with, in THEIR bin! We can cope with composting all the veg matter, at a pinch, you could leave all the outside leaves behind, but a dim view may well be taken. Now if we ALL did this, I wonder what would happen??
Im off to North Wales for 5 days, so you wont be putting up with MY rubbish until then.


Very well said, Annabel! I have a friend who deals very effectively with all the junk mail she receives through the post. She merely sends it all back to the address from whence it came - without a stamp!!!

I agree about the recycling spagbob. Where I live, you have a green box which you can only put tin and glass bottles in (very rare that I use either of these), and a blue bag for newspapers. The items I have that I can recycle (normal paper, plastic bottles, card ect), I have to drive to the local supermarket to recycle. Why there can't be recycle points at the end of streets I don't know. Even better, a bin where all recyclable items can be put in.

The first person to come into the shop who I mentioned this to immediately said "We pay Council tax for this. Why must we pay twice?"

This idea is rubbish (pardon the pun) and I suggest strongly that Cameron oppose this.

The correct approach would be "rebalancing downward": an across-the-board cut in central grants and the taxes which fund them, with each council being free to make up the difference as its electorate decides.

Is this Conservative Party policy? If so, I missed the announcement.

After the reaction today, Labout won't folow through with the policy I'm quite sure.

"Where does the packaging industry come into this lot eh? Who provides all the damn rubbish in the first place. Who asks for junk mail to be put through their letter box for them to chuck out?"

Quite.

This is why local authorities need to pass by-laws allowing unsolicited junk-mail to be made illegal.

I am afraid it is all very well to say that these sort of schemes work in Europe, but if you compare European cities to English cities or indeed to country towns or villages, or trains and buses, the European variety is clean and neat compared to ours - though I hate having to say that. People have siad before - that this is probably because in general the Europeans have more pride in their cities.

I am generalising, but you cannot deny that we have beome very slovenly in a public sense, and it already costs a lot - I am sure - to clear up regularly after dirty, lazy people! And now just to get one up on the Conservatives (so that it can be said that labour has green issues up front, as well of course as clawing back some more money for Mr. Brown - whats new), we have the perfect opportunity presented to have even more rubbish strewn around.

I am NOT a betting person, but in this instance I would be prepared to bet that that is what will happen!

Oh no, not another tax. Don't we have enough as it is?!

"if you compare European cities to English cities or indeed to country towns or villages, or trains and buses, the European variety is clean and neat compared to ours"

It varies by country - towns in Germany are incredibly clean and neat, Greek not so much. London is dirty, but Amsterdam is pretty filthy now too. There isn't a single European standard that we fall short of.

Large parts of Italy are pretty scruffy too.

Imagine this common scenario: In the morning, I put my bin out back to be emptied by the binmen. The bin is 3/4 full, and quite light. I then depart for work.

Later I am billed for the collection, which seems to have consisted of a mixture of lead, depleted uranium, and osmium garnished with neutronium. Extremely heavy, in other words.

Could it be that a neighbour has something heavy to dispose of, and simply goes looking for a part-empty bin to stick it in? Surely not!

How do I then dispute such an incident?

Must I point a CCTV camera at my bin to trap such malefactors, then take civil action against them for this theft of my money?

Can taxation get any stupider than this?

Any inquiry into council tax should have as its main concerns how to make the tax fairer, which it isn`t at present, and how to control and make more efficient council spending.
It shouldn`t be about apparantly thinking up all sorts of ways to tax council tax payers more.

...between 25p and 50p a kilo...

That's one of those euro-thingies, isn't it? What does this mean in real measurements? How many tons?

Dr.Dan H. @ 11.07 - THAT is a very sobering, hypothetical scenario. YES WHAT COULD WE DO IN A CASE LIKE THAT??? Do WE just pay up, or is it yet another case of lawyers being able to make yet more money from the ordinary taxpayer?

Geoff: "between 25p and 50p a kilo..." That's one of those euro-thingies, isn't it? What does this mean in real measurements? How many tons?

In the article I estimated 50p per kilo works out at roughly 23p per lb, but using a more accurate conversion ratio gives you between £254.01 and £508.02 per ton. Or, if you prefer, between 5,080/2d and 10,160/5d in old money.

William, you are a gentleman, Sir. My thanks.

The comments to this entry are closed.

#####here####

Categories

ConHome on Twitter

    follow me on Twitter

    Conservative blogs

    Today's public spending saving

    New on other blogs

    • Receive our daily email
      Enter your details below:
      Name:
      Email:
      Subscribe    
      Unsubscribe 

    • Tracker 2
    • Extreme Tracker