Where There's Trash There's Tax

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