Month: October 2008

The Guardian reports that Conservative shadow Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, has threatened to expose Conservative councillors who get involved in variable charging schemes as ‘collaborators’.

I’m not quite sure what conclusions I draw from this.  Obviously domestic rubbish collection and recycling is seen as an area where the Opposition can garner significant public support; the persistent trickle of ‘bugs in bins’ stories in the press seems determined to keep this at the top of the political agenda.  But the tactic of threatening your own party members with a vote-losing public ‘outing’ seems rather odd.  Does Eric Pickles not have confidence in his colleagues in local government to represent the people who elect them and to make local decisions?

What I would really like to see is a clear statement from the Conservative party on what they would do in power to tackle this country’s dependence on landfill and incineration.  If there is an as-yet undisclosed ‘third way’ in which we can stop filling the ground with rubbish and the air with methane without having to put chips in bins and expensive equipment on the back of every bin truck then I’m sure it would be a great vote winner.

Mr Pickles – feel free to click Comment below and fill in the details….

Well, I rather suspect that someone has!

I’ve long suspected that certain newspapers and other media outlets have simply decided that waste collection is one of their ‘old faithful’ subjects that they can simply reheat every time they have a slow news day, alongside ‘who killed Princess Diana’ and ‘chocolate is good for you’ (or bad for you, depending on whatever they wrote last time).

Even so, I had to chuckle at the link between ‘pay as you throw’ and cancer! There are many reasons why people burn things in their garden (barbecues quite possibly chief amongst them for middle-class Daily Mail readers), many sources of dioxins in the atmosphere and many causes for many variants of cancers. The article doesn’t consider the negative effects of our landfill culture on the local environment and the wider carbon emissions problem. I don’t have any idea whether one outweighs the other but unfortunately this rather unbalanced article doesn’t leave me or anyone else any the wiser.

What is undeniable is that there is a common concern, particularly from the Irish experience with variable charging, that ‘pay as you throw’ will lead to environmental side-effects such as fly-tipping and waste burning. Local authorities implementing schemes must ensure that they include clear communication (supported by local by-laws if necessary) to prevent diversion of waste to illegal burning and dumping.

I’m sure the Daily Mail will be very supportive of councils who clamp down on people having illegal, cancer-causing bonfires in their back gardens!

Original article here

I’m not a tax inspector or a traffic warden. It’s worse than that – I work in the waste collection industry. Admit that, even in polite circles, and you might as well add “I’ll get my coat”. It seems that everyone has an opinion on the role of technology in waste collection, usually underpinned by the suspicion that a new tax is just around the corner.

RFID (the ‘chip in the bin’) seems in danger of being blighted by its association with ‘pay by weight’. With householders now on the lookout for any signs of a technology which might be a Trojan horse for variable charging it would perhaps be a brave local authority who publicly announced that not only were they putting chips in bins, but were also going to read the tags and weigh the bins at point of collection.

This is a shame because bin tags are an established technology which can empower local authorities and their contractors to improve services and reduce costs. Cutting out recalls for missed bins (and the enormous administrative effort that it causes) is one quantifiable benefit, but precise household-level data and automated auditing functions are all part of a picture of increased efficiency and faster response. The waste industry has historically been slow to adopt technology solutions, but smart adoption of RFID could make a big contribution to improving the relationship between householder and Council and ease the way for future changes such as variable charging.

Consumers are accustomed to suppliers keeping them up to date with service information via email and the web. My water, electricity and gas suppliers all send me information about my service electronically – why shouldn’t waste collectors do the same? “Thank you Mrs Smith, this month you recycled 44% of your waste and as a result the end of the world has been postponed by 28 seconds.” OK, that still needs a bit of work, but it demonstrates the level of information that can be made available, both internally within the local authority and more widely to consumers of the service.

The technology and equipment required to do this already exists, and much of it is already in place in a number of Councils. The challenge is for local authorities to openly embrace RFID and weighing and prove to householders that it can be about much more than pay by weight. The technology can be used to identify households recycling successfully and deliver targeted assistance to those who are not. The result can be a much stronger relationship with householders; a win-win where householders get improved service, councils reduce operating costs and recycling rates increase.

Then again, perhaps they’ll just be used to charge us more for waste collection.

Blaby District Council introduced the UK’s first variable charging scheme for household waste in 2000.  The scheme was designed to restrict householders to 140 litres of non recyclable waste per week, and gave householders the option to purchase additional capacity and waste services as and when required.

Variable_Charging_at_Blaby_District_Council.pdf

The intention was that by restricting the capacity of the residual waste bin, residents would realise how much waste they produce and therefore encourage householders to make full use of the opportunities available to reduce and recycle their waste. The philosophy behind the scheme was communicated to residents by distributing a DVD with a special edition council newspaper to all 37,500 households in the District.  In addition to this a number of roadshows and promotional events were held to reinforce the message.

Blaby clearly believe that the scheme has been successful, as the amount of waste to landfill reduced by 3% within its first year of operation and the overall recycling rate has increased from 29.3% in 2004/05 to 37% in 2005/06.

This methodology is pretty much an exact fit with the ‘bin size scheme’ described in the draft ‘Guidance to Councils’ issued by DEFRA.  What is most interesting is that Blaby have managed to implement a scheme some 8 years ahead of the Climate Change Bill which DEFRA have heralded as being a necessary piece of legislation to enable waste incentive schemes to be piloted.

A couple from Hampshire have hit the news by collecting enough AirMiles from recycling litter they picked up from the streets at the local Tesco store. It’s one of those ‘and finally’ stories that run at the end of the news, but it does raise a few interesting questions (not all of them entirely serious)…

• how does the cost of the flights compare to the costs the Council would have incurred collecting the litter? Does this point the way to cost savings where Councils close their street cleaning departments and award holidays and consumer white goods to people who bring in litter?
• are Tesco aware of the irony of rewarding the green activities of people with Clubcard points which are subsequently converted to AirMiles, these in turn being converted into huge amounts of carbon dioxide?
• did Ann Till collect all the litter herself, or did she have a mob of small cartoon characters driving around in a car to help her? If you don’t get that joke then please Google ‘Penelope Pitstop’.

However, this does point the way to capturing the public’s imagination and boosting recycling. Could such incentives to recycle point the way to a positive ‘pay by weight’ scenario? Certainly if glass and other dry recyclables were taken to supermarkets and other ‘community locations’ then the collection becomes much more financially and environmentally efficient than sending a vehicle to every house every fortnight.