MPs have called for greater financial incentives to cut household waste and boost recycling.
A report by members of the communities and local government select committee on refuse collection has criticised government plans to offer rewards of as little as £20 or £30 a year to encourage householders to sort and recycle waste for being ‘so minimal their impact on behaviour is likely to be negligible.’
MPs said the incentives would be more effective if councils were able to offer at least £50 a year, and warned that authorities would not be interested in setting up complicated charging schemes which would earn no money, risk widespread public opposition and lead to an increase in fly-tipping if they attempted to charge householders who did not sort refuse.
Committee chair, Dr Phyllis Starkey, described current government proposals in a public consultation on future waste strategy – which is due to end on 16 August – as ‘timid’, and said that councils should be free to introduce schemes best suited to their own area. ‘We would like the Government to come up with a core definition of what householders should expect from their refuse collection, commission research and promote best practice,’ said Dr Starkey.
The report says ‘refuse collection is one of local government’s most visible services, and one of the few that is truly universal – unlike even education social services’, but it also recognises that it can provoke fierce public debate, even though household waste accounts for only one-tenth of the 272M tonnes of waste produced in England each year.
Cllr Paul Bettison, chair of the Local Government Association’s environment board, supported the MPs call for more action to reduce food waste, but warned that councils faced spiralling costs for waste management and collection services, with average household bills set to double to £220 by 2013. ‘On top of this, councils will pay up to £3bn in landfill tax over the next four years. If this money is not returned to local government in an open and transparent way, this cost will be passed on to council taxpayers,’ he said.
Dirk Hazell, chief executive of the Environmental Services Association, stressed the need to streamline planning process to speed up building new infrastructure to recover value from waste. ‘Planning policy is a fundamental obstacle to building the “recycling society” and the committee lost a chance to recommend specific action to ensure that sufficient infrastructure is delivered on time to meet our European obligations to divert waste from landfill,’ he said.
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