Recycling carrots

Jul 15 2008 by Sue Scott, Evening Gazette

DO you already fill your recycling bin or do you need a financial sweetener to go greener? News that the Conservative party wants to pay people to recycle, was greeted by widespread scepticism on Tees, as GLORIA McSHANE discovered

OUTLINING proposals for a “carrot” rather than “stick” approach to recycling in the UK, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said Britain should follow the practice in some US cities of paying households up to $50 (£25) a month to recycle.

Teesside families would certainly welcome the extra greenbacks, but laudable as it is for the Tories to want to pull up Britain by its recycled bootstraps, recycling organisations detect a hitch.

Mr Osborne might think the “heavy-handed approach” of fining households for not recycling is unpopular, but not nearly as much as having your bins nicked by green raiders would be, according to collection and recycling firm Premier Waste’s spokesman, Tony Hitchins.

And in any case, people in Redcar and Cleveland don’t appear to need any incentive to save the planet.

According to the borough council, householders already recycle 40% of their rubbish - way above the North-east average of 26%.

The council says it doesn’t believe in either rewarding or fining people, preferring instead to “encourage” them to keep their waste out of landfill sites through public awareness campaigns.

Mr Hitchins, head of marketing at regional Premier Waste, said while it welcomed any scheme that encouraged people to recycle, pay-to-throw could be open to abuse.

He said: “Care must be taken that this isn’t an incentive to buy even more packaging.

“And will you get some people stealing recycling from their neighbours or from work?”

Theft from recycling bins is a growing problem in US cities including New York and San Francisco, as the soaring cost of commodities such as aluminium and newsprint, encourage thieves to make a quick green buck.

Mr Hitchins added that recycling payments could be seen as “a kick in the nuts” to those who already recycled because it was simply “the right thing to do”.

He pointed out that Tory proposals also focused on items such as cans and bottles, and did not appear to deal with the issue of food-based composting.

There were other problems, too.

Tom Punton, head of Streetscene Services at Middlesbrough Council, said: “There are clearly a number of legal and technical issues which would need to be clarified before any changes of this sort could be considered.

“It may be necessary to consider the national recycling infrastructure and its ability to deal with a sudden growth of materials requiring reprocessing.”

Earlier this year, the Readshaw family from Ingleby Barwick, a member of the Gazette’s Parents’ Panel, was set the challenge of recycling all its household rubbish for a month.

Green warrior mum Lucy said that, with the right advice, it was easier than she’d thought.

“The only time it becomes more of a commitment is when you have to go somewhere especially to drop things off. I am not sure that I would get round to doing that.”

But others might make the effort ... especially for £25 a month.