Purple Haze - Local refuse collections

I have previously posted about my council area’s idea on ‘encouraging’ recycling by simply charging for more than one bag. It appears that they are gearing up to roll this out to the entire borough after the trial seems to be going well. The newspaper report says that the relevant committee reveived a report on the first two weeks of this new trial scheme and will receive a further report in which making it a borough wide scheme will probably be discussed. To be contemplating a roll out on 2 weeks collections is mind-numbingly idiotic, to make a good decision you need at least 6 months of data to show that there isn’t a reversion after the novelty factor.

I would offer a few pieces of advice to the Councillors who are charged with the decision making. Firstly the people in the trial area I have spoken too, bitterly resent this measure. They see it as a money making exercise and will do whatever protestations are made. Secondly it will lose you votes and if you roll it out borough-wide prior to May you will be inviting trouble. Put it this way if I was standing against a Conservative candidate in next May’s elections then this issue would be number one, it would probably be the only one. A decent campaigning group can make this highly toxic. Finally it is going to look even worse when the council tax increase comes in at 4.9% just under the governments target. When Councils such as Hammersmith & Fulham which have more responsibilities and ergo more budgetary pressures are cutting council tax by 3% for a second year, the good citizens of the Borough of Broxbourne are going to resent another nearly 5% increase, that is without the increases in the Police and County Council portions of the tax.

The members of Broxbourne Council are good people, I fear that they are either being sold down the river by officers or they are being put under pressure from outside, namely central government. Either way the hard pressed council tax payers will be penalised.

In other news Wendy Alexander still hasn’t resigned.

One bin bag scheme - Is it rubbish?

I have just been surfing around and have come across this article regarding my council. I am fortunate, I live on my own and do not generate an enormous amount of waste. I recycle what I can and so rarely end up with one bag of actual rubbish a fortnight let alone a week. I am fortunate in one other way too, I am not in the pilot zone. There are plenty of families who recycle but there will also be plenty of families who because of size and nature will naturally generate a large volume of un-recyclable waste. This large volume will probably be larger than one bag per week. To charge them for more than one bag on top of council tax will be bitterly bitterly resented.

Why is this pilot being organized? Well central government has decided to impose strict and entirely arbitrary recycling targets on councils, with the threat if not the reality of penalties for not adhering to those targets. This means that councils and councillors have to find means of getting the target met, and frankly you would be a zen like person who offers a carrot when all you have waiting for you is a beating with a large stick. So consequently councils are in the invidious position of having to try and force the recycling rates up rather than encourage them up, force is often a lot quicker than encouragement. So we get to this ridiculous position where councils are fining people effectively on behalf of the government.

There is another factor related to human behaviour. We tend to act out of self-interest more often than for any other consideration. Consequently we will behave in a way that benefits us. Consequently when a large retailer offers you reward points for your recycling and all your local authority can offer is a fine, what are you going to do? Absolutely, got it in one! The government however cannot or does not account for recycling that doesn’t go through a local authority. This means that the real recycling rate in this borough is probably several percentage points higher than the government will allow. Why do I assert this? Well because I whenever I have been to my local retailer, the one that offers points on recycling, there is a queue for the recycling facilities. Also my Mum recycles everything through this supermarket and is racking up recycling points. It is the operation of an enviro-market economy. However it isn’t included in the governments figures, so the council is likely to get clobbered by Whitehall, and the man in the street will get clobbered by the council.

It is central government that is ultimately responsible for the trial of this scheme, however they will not suffer. It will be the hardworking Councillors who have had their backs forced against a wall over this who will lose votes, and possibly their seats over this. Why should anyone be punished for going with the incentive based scheme of recycling over a scheme which is based on threat? This whole mess stems from the fact that the central government has zero concept of diversity and choice, and makes sure that councils have few options with regard to this major area of local policy. I earnestly hope that the piloting of this scheme shows that it can not work, because I think it would be a total disaster if it was introduced more widely. For local councillors it would certainly be “controversial” as defined by Sir Humphrey Appleby, it could prove to be “courageous”. I know it is not the fault of the councillors that this scheme is being tried, I know most of them personally, this will have not been the first option that they looked at but the last. My biggest frustration is that they have little choice, so the public gets punished for exercising their choice.

Central government attitudes to the environment and recycling - It’s rubbish!!!!

Fortnightly Waste Collections

A lot of comment was excited during the election about waste collection periods. Any council suggesting that a move be made to fortnightly collection was castigated. Almost everyone seeking election in May suddenly became anti-fortnightly. In many cases councils and local politicians have become harder opinioned since May and now seem to be anti-fortnightly on principle. I think this is somewhat bizarre, and certainly lacking in common sense. I would be against fortnightly collections in my council area at present but only on a practical level. The two main arguments that seem to be put up are as follows. Firstly weekly refuse collections are traditional and secondly weekly refuse collections are more hygienic.

I think the traditionalism argument bears little real scrutiny, it is a scoundrels argument that things shouldn’t change if there is a better alternative. I will return to this though. The second argument is hygiene, at present I would agree this is a practical objection but can not be sustained as a principled objection. The hygiene argument resolves around, smell and rotting refuse laying around for a fortnight. To my mind most things that will start to smell will do so because they degrade, and so consequently are either recyclable or are green waste which many councils are beginning to collect separately. The same with things that rot. So we are left with refuse that is non-recyclable and non-degradable being collected fortnightly. This to me seems sensible as there doesn’t appear to be many things that will be in that category, so accumulation will be less.

The real danger is rotated collections, whereby you rotate refuse and recycling/green waste collections. Currently my council has weekly rubbish collections accompanied by either a green waste collection or a recycling collection. So green waste has a fortnight to degrade potentially, most of the recycling stuff is glass, plastic, tins and paper stuffs, which do not smell but may accumulate in quantities. The issue is that currently the only green waste that is accepted is garden waste, there is the potential to take all degradable waste from what I know but this isn’t available yet. Similarly there are restrictions on what is taken in terms of recycling, this means that there is still a large accumulation of refuse. Naturally the council and local conservative party are resisting the idea of fortnightly refuse collection. At present they are absolutely right to do so. It would be impractical to have any other system in place.

The problem will come as I see it once all degradable waste can be collected that there will probably be a need to make the green waste collection more regular and the genuine refuse collection will be consequently less needed as there will be less accumulation. If the councillors still hold an anti-fortnightly attitude then in terms of refuse they will be incorrect. The question is not about frequency of collection but type of collection, there should be weekly collection but of degradable items. Anything else is either non-degradable recyclables or non-recyclables both of which will generally be ok to be collected fortnightly.