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