Monstrously Stupid Recycling Laws Fine People Who Waste Less
SO, we think there should be less stuff wasted. Sounds like a plan: so, therefore we will fine people who waste less. This is, well, this is monstrously stupid, isn’t it? But it is what the European Union is going to do to Britain. We now waste less paper and glass than we used to. Therefore we are going to be fined.
Recycling rates will fall for the first time in over 10 years due to “green fatigue” caused by councils imposing numerous confusing bins on households, one of the country’s biggest bin collectors has predicted.
The fall will make it almost certain that Britain will miss tough EU targets of recycling half of all household waste by 2020.
A combination of “green fatigue”, declining glass usage, and local authority budget cuts are also likely to have contributed to the fall, which risks the UK having to pay millions of pounds in fines.
The important bit in there is “declining glass usage”.
The two most common things to get recycled are paper and glass. This is because of two things. One, they’re actually things that can usefully be recycled. We can go and make new paper and new glass from the old stuff and we can even make a small profit by doing so. So, good things to do.
However, we all simply use less glass and paper than we used to. Newspapers, the biggest source of domestic paper waste, are in terminal decline as we all read online these days. And we’re simply moving away from glass bottles. More TetraPaks, more plastic and so on. So, there’s simply less glass and paper that could possibly be recycled.
Or, another way that we could put this, we’re just using less of both in the first place: we’re wasting less stuff. So, along comes the EU and says that we must pay fines for this. Because their recycling targets are based on the percentage of domestic waste that is recycled. Not, as it should be, on the amount that is, or the resources not used in the first place, but purely on whether 50% of rubbish is recycled or not.
So, we end up producing less rubbish in the first place but getting fined because, well, because we’re creating less rubbish.
How in hell did we end up with the idiots running the entire continent?
Photo: In this photo taken Friday, Jan, 24. 2014, scavengers in Lagos, Nigeria sort out iron and plastic to sell at the Olusosun dump site the city’s largest dump. With a population of more than 20 million, garbage piles up on streets, outside homes and along the waterways and lagoons, creating eyesores and putrid smells. The booming city also has major electricity shortages and many residents rely on diesel generators that cloud the air with black exhaust. Nigeria’s most populous city is turning these problems into an advantage by starting a program to convert waste into methane gas to generate electricity. A pilot program at a local market has already shown success on a smaller scale. Lagos waste management program is also organizing recycling to clean up the country’s biggest city. (AP Photo/ Sunday Alamba)
Posted: 27th, May 2014 | In: Money, Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
