Government ditches "pay as you throw" recycling schemes
The government is to scrap Labour’s “pay as you throw” plan for dealing with waste and instead encourage councils to operate reward programmes.
On a trip to the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, which runs a pioneering recycling reward scheme, the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: “Rather than helping the environment, bin taxes would have fuelled fly-tipping and backyard burning. The best way to encourage people to recycle is not to punish families, but to encourage and reward them for going green.”
Under the Windsor scheme, households volunteer for a RecycleBank account. They then earn points for how much of their mixed waste they recycle, which can be redeemed with local and national reward partners or donated to local schools.
The scheme is being rolled out to 60,000 households with rewards of up to £135 per year. The council expects the initiative to save money by transferring recyclables away from landfill and provide a boost local businesses.
Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, added: “Windsor and Maidenhead Council has got it right by rewarding people for voluntarily doing the right thing, not penalising them for doing the wrong thing – that is how we can change behaviour, improve the environment and get people to play their part in a Big Society.”
The government’s announcement came as the cabinet at Bristol City Council was set to decide on two pilot recycling schemes intended to help it reach its target of 50% household recycling by the end of the year and a significant reduction in the amount of household waste sent to landfill.
Bristol’s “Recycling for All” pilot would require residents to separate their rubbish and not put recyclables in their wheelie bin with their non-recyclable waste. The council will send letters and handy hint sheets to households, and provide telephone legal advice and visits from its team of “waste doctors”.
The local authority has warned that it could still bring enforcement action against residents that still put recyclable materials in their wheelie bin.
Cllr Gary Hopkins, cabinet member for strategic waste, said: “There is no excuse for anyone to keep dumping recyclable waste in their wheelie bin, when we provide easy to use services like the black box and brown bin collection services on the doorstep.
The cabinet at Bristol, which claims to be the UK’s number one major city for recycling, will also consider whether to approve a reduction in the size of residents’ standard wheelie bin.
Under the scheme, which would be phased in over a number of years, households would be issued with different sized bins depending on the number of occupants.
