Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, announced recently that
the proposed Decentralisation and Localism Bill will remove local
authority powers to trial 'pay-as-you-throw' tax
schemes.
These powers, given to local authorities in the Climate Change Act,
were dubbed the 'bin tax' by the press. Coverage of the tax
tended to focus on the issue of civil liberties, rather than waste
reduction - with reports of micro-chipped wheelie bins and snooping
councils becoming common. Bristol City Council was one of the few
bold enough to touch such a political hot potato. Its proposed
scheme – which involved fining householders for
persistently failing to segregate recyclable materials from their
waste – has now been shelved.
The present government is known to favour rewarding households for
reducing waste. A reward scheme has been piloted successfully by
Windsor & Maidenhead Council recently, and it is likely that
the Decentralisation and Localism Bill will contain measures to
encourage similar schemes.
Whether by the carrot or the stick, one thing is for certain; the
problem of reducing the amount of household waste sent to landfill
is not going to disappear. The UK sends more household waste to
landfill than any other country in the European Union. As well as
annual increases in landfill tax, there is a very real threat of
hefty fines from the EU if key landfill reduction targets are
missed in 2013 and 2020. Gary Porter, Chairman of the LGA
Environment Board, said recently that the combination of landfill
tax and EU fines will add £50 to the average council tax bill
every year.
Meanwhile, the new government is consulting on imposing civil
sanctions on waste management companies who do not offer separate
facilities to collect segregated paper, glass, metal and plastic
from commercial premises as reported in our third article in this
Bulletin.
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