Tories to use financial incentives to encourage recycling

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne is expected to suggest that carrots should be used instead of sticks to boost recycling at this evening’s Green Alliance summer reception at the Royal Society of Medicine.

Environmental think tank Green Alliance waste expert Hannah Hislop said: “This is an innovative scheme. We’re delighted it will be tested in the UK. Other approaches must be tried too, including the government’s proposals to reward recyclers and charge more to those that do not recycle.

“But the ultimate aim is to create less waste in the first place, rather than reward people for generating it.”

Osborne is also expected to say that landfill taxes would not fall under the Tories and will highlight some US companies which offer to cut the landfill tax bill by increasing recycling rates.

A spokesman for the Local Government Association said local authorities should be able to use both a carrot and a stick to persuade householders to recycle more.

“We have a long-standing policy supporting incentives to make people recycle more, but introducing a charging system might not be appropriate in all areas.

“Local authorities should be able to make the decisions themselves about what schemes they use.”

Waste collection and recycling in England has risen and the amount of rubbish being sent to landfill has fallen, but the UK still lags behind the rest of Europe.

Total collected municipal waste increased by 1.4% to 29.1 million tonnes in 2006/7, according to figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Almost 42%, or 12.2 million tonnes, of collected municipal waste had value (recycling, composting, energy from waste and fuel manufacture) recovered from it, up from 10.7 million tonnes in the previous year.

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