OK – no more jokes on Brown going green. I am just trying to make up for the fact that, personally, I am useless at recycling. I use the council recycling bin for a coal bucket and I chuck bottles of every colour into the general trash. My excuse is that newspaper will rot in the ground, helping to aerate the soil, and being a binge drinker, I rarely drink at home. But – one more comment on the Green Budget. The tax on landfill has been all but doubled, to £8 a tonne. According to the waste industry Cassandras quoted in the Telegraph, it will be the end of this form of waste disposal – one that a lot of people feel uncomfortable with.
I am not convinced it is a good idea to impose a punitive tax on a practice for which, presumably, there is no immediate, cost-equivalent alternative, and which in the meantime must be a necessary dimension of a consumer economy. I can’t help think, too, that there will be an inevitable backdraft into local authority finances, with council taxes pushed up to pay the landfill tax, or other services cut.
Telegraph - Environment Links
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Higher landfill tax = higher council tax. Higher council tax = changed behaviours.
Recycling is about resource productivity and saving the energy used to make virgin goods by re-using resources. This helps to reduce cost to the consumer and environment.
Landfill is abhorrent and we need to move away from it as soon as possible, hence the punitive Landfill Tax. Grants are avaialbel to local authorities to make recyling easier so there is a carrot and stick.
The future is to cut out waste at source with less packaging and more intuitive design, then recycle what we can and burn the rest to make energy. All of these options are infinitely preferable to dumping waste in the ground. I've been to a landfill site and it ain't pretty.
http://timmymc.blogspot.com
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