Wednesday 15 June 2011

Won’t Get Fooled Again…

The Government is expected to outlaw "unfair" bin fines for households in its waste review today.
Well, I’m not going to cheer.

Didn’t they also promise to ensure we went back to weekly collections? And how did that turn out?
But ministers are not expected to provide cash for councils to increase the frequency of rubbish collections - despite reports they would earmark funds for town halls to bring back weekly bin rounds or for weekly food waste collections.
Yeah. Like I figured…
Ahead of today's announcement, Friends of the Earth's waste campaigner Julian Kirby said: "Ministers must stop trying to bully councils into running weekly bin rounds - fortnightly collections are hygienic and popular, provided they're accompanied by decent recycling and weekly food waste pick-ups too.

"Weekly bin collections are more expensive to run and lead to less waste being recycled, which is bad news for cash-strapped councils and families and bad news for the environment."
Oh, do shut up, you whining freaks! You aren’t ‘friends of the earth’, you’re enemies of humanity…
The review will see councils stripped of the ability to impose fines on householders who break minor bin collection rules, with town halls only able to issue fixed penalty notices to "neighbours from hell" who allow rubbish to pile up or those who fly-tip.
Well, now. Maybe this won't inevitably lead to council workers surreptitiously tipping up bins full of waste into gardens so they can accuse the householders and get a nice little earner.

Yeah, I won’t hold my breath, though…

10 comments:

subrosa said...

Up here most of the recycling all goes to landfill because they don't have the facilities to do anything else.

Makes sense though when you know that councils are paid for recycling pickups not end of line production.

Captain Haddock said...

There are many, many hundreds of miles of disused, deep mine workings in the UK .. why not put them to good use ?

Plus, there's the Channel Tunnel ..

Steve T said...

The fact is these schemes are because the occupying power has dictated that more should be collected for recycling. This is regardless of whether they will actually be recycled or not.

They will actually use more energy, for no benefit gained.

However while we remain occupied there is little that can be done

English Viking said...

Subrosa,

I always thought Scotland was a landfill :-)

The way to encourage recycling is to reduce the amount of Council tax a community pays by the amount of cash the Council makes out of the recycled rubbish that community leaves out for recycling. If the the Council is losing cash hand over fist with this recycling lark (and I am almost sure they are) then they should just abandon the ridiculous scheme, build a coal-fired power station and burn all the crap. It's not difficult, is it?

Uncle Badger said...

Just how many votes did Friends of the frigin' Earth win at the last election?

Why do we have to listen to what these lunatics think? Why are they allowed such a disproportionate voice?

Anonymous said...

There is no shortage of land suitable for landfill.
The reason it is expensive, is the tax imposed on landfill operations, at the behest of our overlords in Brussels.

Monty

Athelney said...

Captain Haddock, filling old mines would be very expensive. Many of the older mine workings have been inundated with water.

JuliaM said...

"Makes sense though when you know that councils are paid for recycling pickups not end of line production."

Once, food waste went to pigs. That's now a no-no.

"There are many, many hundreds of miles of disused, deep mine workings in the UK .. why not put them to good use ?"

Can we put the politicians in first? That way, whether they are full of water or not doesn't really matter...

"Why do we have to listen to what these lunatics think? Why are they allowed such a disproportionate voice?"

Good question.

"The reason it is expensive, is the tax imposed on landfill operations, at the behest of our overlords in Brussels."

I'd like to see more newspapers pointing that out in every waste story.

David Gillies said...

My trash (unsorted, basically anything I want to get rid of, kitchen waste, paper, cans, bottles, whathaveyou, gets dumped in a bin bag on the kerb every Monday and Thursday and a cheerful gang of deeply smelly young men come by and throw it in the back of a big lorry. What do they do with it? Who the fuck knows? Sensible people do not concern themselves with such brain-sickly speculation. I assume they burn it, or dump it in a big hole somewhere, or throw it in the sea. I don't care. I live in a country which, despite its diminutive size, happens to boast about 5% of all the known species on the planet, so we must be doing something right. Recycling is a wank-fantasy for Islington Grauniad readers and nothing more. Aluminium: yeah, I'll buy into that. Everything else: get bent. Why? Because homeless people collect aluminium cans. They don't collect newspapers.

Athelney said...

I recently upbraided a stroppy teenager who had dropped his fried chicken box, complete with gnawed chicken bones, onto the pavement outside my house. There is a rubbish bin about ten yards further along the street.

Among the torrent of defensive and near-incoherent patois gibberish which he emitted was the line 'I don't care'.

People who don't care are often made to care, sooner or later.