Packaging gets on Soap Box over recycling fines

David Munden said that councils needed to make recycling “as easy as possible” for households. “They should not be bureaucratic or use it for extra revenue by fining people for genuine mistakes or leaving their dustbin open by four inches.”

But he was not confident about the UK implementing such a policy as “the country is full of highly paid bureaucrats, whose only real expertise is to make our lives a misery”.

Packaging News columnist Des King was equally sceptical; accusing politicians of “jumping on the populist bandwagon”. “I thought we were already paying to have the rubbish collected.”

Peter Rogers outlined a four-point plan for tackling waste and said it was “high time to stop using ‘big levers’ to sort out a very simple problem”.

He said it was important to find profitable disposal methods, such as energy recovery, when recycling didn’t happen, but said that “everything should be done” to ensure the recovery of high value materials, perhaps by introducing returnable deposit schemes.

He highlighted the need for separate material collections and said it was important for the money recovered by councils from recycling to be made public knowledge.

“It should be used to cut council tax. If that’s not an incentive to recycle, I don’t know what is,” he added.

If you think recycling fines are a waste of space or you would support financial incentives, simply log in to Soap Box and have your say.

If you have any suggestions about topics for Soap Box, please send an email to PN.Editorial@haymarket.com

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