Author information: Joy Blizzard is a waste initiatives officer at Shropshire county council as well as a nationally elected representative of a leading local authority organisation promoting waste reduction in the UK – the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC). Through her work as communications officer at LARAC she has become a regular on radio and television, pushing the recycling message to the public. Two Brown bottles, wobbling on the wall,
two Brown bottles wobbling on the wall
and if one Brown bottle will accidentally fall….
Well, you get the gist.
One bottle for the election that never was, now the one person I thought would encourage us all to be prudent with the worlds' resources has bottled out of beefing up the policies needed to make the step change in recycling.
Plastic bag reduction alone is not likely to hit the target! I notice that the word “charging” has also disappeared. I suppose in the same way that changing the name Windscale to Sellafield would surely stop any nuclear leaks. Shakespeare may have argued that there was nothing in a name, but clearly the policy wonks disagree.
I still can't see the problem with pay as you throw. It's hardly an alien concept for Mr and Mrs Cul-de-sac to grasp. We pay as we eat and we pay as we use petrol.
Oddly enough we don't have community gas or electricity bills. We are also used to the concept of fines for stepping out of line – be it the late return of a library book, being frogmarched to a cash point for antisocial behaviour or speeding in a built up area.
So, dear reader, we now have a very cautious 5 pilot programme suggested for incentives schemes. It sounds like they will need Captain Scarlet to pilot this one.
Who wants to go first? Being one of just 5 authorities volunteering to go over the top whilst the rest remain in the trench isn't particularly appealing.
I also suspect that any local authority will want more support than usually comes forth when things inevitably get tough around waste issues. We will need DEFRA to come roaring out of the blocks and robustly support any such pilot rather than retreat behind the “it's a local decision” line.
So to get more pilot programmes, we will need less Pontious Pilates– washing their hands of us when things get rough.
I'm watching this one with interest.
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