Modern Life is Rubbish

In a typical piece of New Labour chicanery, Gordon Brown, our beloved Prime Minister appeared on GMTV this morning, backpeddling over the “bin tax” proposals. He really is scared about not being re-elected! For those who are unfamiliar with GMTV, it is a breakfast “magazine” programme which assumes its viewers are semi-comatose and uses this as an excuse for producing low-quality pap for two hours.

Anyway, before I rudely interrupted myself. Last year a few feathers were ruffled when it was suggested that local authorities could charge people depending on how much rubbish they produced. There were all sorts of clever ideas - weighing scales on the back of rubbish trucks, barcode identification systems on bins (all paid for out of our local council tax, of course). Naturally, the GMTV classes got all upset about this, and when the Climate Change Bill was published last November, it had been watered down so that in fact only five local councils were to act as a pilot scheme.

In the Experiments in Living household, we try to recycle, reuse and compost as much as we can. It is a source of frustration that our council does not collect plastic, so we save plastic bottles and take them with us whenever we go to see my folks as their local council does recycle them. Maybe this is more than a bit sad, but I’m quite pleased with the fact that we produce one modest-sized refuse sack per week and the bin men don’t even wheel our bin out, they just chuck the bag into next door’s bin and take that.

So in principle I am behind anything that encourages people to take more responsibility over what they send to the landfill. But - and you knew there would be a but - it will just end up costing more. Those of us who already make the effort to reduce our waste wouldn’t benefit, because of all the equipment needed to make the scheme work. Plus, knowing our fly-tipping neighbours, they would just chuck their rubbish in our bin. What’s next, locks on wheelie bins? Ludicrous!

When it comes to green taxes, I am very skeptical as regards their effectiveness. It’s like cigarettes, alcohol and petrol; the government keep on slapping on the duty, but people still smoke, drink and drive (although hopefully not all at the same time). Like the extra “green” tax on UK departures by air doesn’t seem to have hit the travel industry at all, although the credit crunch may

What really gets me though, is all the emphasis on the individual to take responsibility for the environment, when companies produce outrageous amounts of wastefulness like shrink wrapped coconuts, and apples in plastic trays. People need to see the big boys taking some serious responsibilty for their various waste footprints, and then maybe some of that might trickle down to the masses.

The Northern Echo suggests some actions we can all take to reduce the amount of rubbish we send to the tip. At last some sense on the subject.