Bugged bins etc
I watched Real Story this week on the BBC. It was mainly about how local councils and people are dealing with their new recycling collections. Many people seem to think that it ’s been a complete disaster. I think it is something that need to be done however painful. I’m sure if the same people who were shown complaining about the new systems found out that the council was planning a new landfill site nearby there would be similar level of complaint. I think this is a choice that needs to be made and if people don’t do it themselves then it does need to be enforced. Part of the problem I think is our ever consuming society - this needs to change so that the assumption that is is socially acceptable to do something like be a new car every year is frowned upon. It’s not just the consumers who need to change - what’s the point in shrink wrapping a coconut?
We have been having a bit of an ongoing discussion about recycling where I work after our local council changed the way the they do their recycling. The main point of contention is the bugged bin controversy. Our council is one of the ones that has bugged their new wheelie bins which is fine by me. The only problem I have with this is that they didn’t tell anybody that this is what they were going to do. If they had said that they were going to put a chip in our new bins so that they could weigh rubbish so that they could look into ways to improve the collection or even a pay to throw system I have no problem with that. But they didn’t and now upset residents have removed them or broken incurring more costs on the council and no doubt at some point our council tax will go up.
In the Real Story programme this week there were a few facts that I didn’t know:
- Councils need to pay £18/tonne of rubbish to in landfill tax
- This is going to go up £3/tonne every year
- Councils have limits on how much waste they can put in landfills if they go over this figure they can fined £150/tonne
We received the Bournemouth Council mag this week as well. They mention the chipped bins, giving a brief explanation. They say that they do actually anticipate using them for a while as the bin trucks are not equipped to use them. I am not even sure it is legal for them to use them yet!
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