Families rationed to 80 bags of rubbish a year

Filed in Waste News by on January 27, 2011 33 Comments
FavoriteLoadingAdd article to favourites
How many bags of rubbish does your family produce?

How many bags of rubbish does your family produce?

How many black rubbish bags do you and your family need each year for landfill waste?

If a new scheme is introduced throughout the UK, families may be rationed to 80 bags of rubbish per year!

Follow the rest of the story below, then jump to the Daily Mail to read the rest. As ever, I’d love to hear your comments …

Families face being rationed to 80 bags of rubbish a year.

Households throwing away more waste will have to take it to the tip or buy a limited number of extra bags.

The scheme is already in use with one council, is being introduced by another and is under consideration by up to 180 more.

The quotas are the latest attempt by local authorities to cut down on waste to meet EU targets.

Doretta Cocks, of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections, said: ‘This is rationing.

‘Some councils with fortnightly collections and wheelie bins are already doing it by reducing the size of their wheelie bins.

‘They must think we are idiots. How can they claim to be concerned for the environment when they tell people to drive to the local tip?

‘And what do you do if you don’t have a car? Walk?’

The quotas fly in the face of vows from ministers to end such heavy-handedness.

Eric Pickles, Communities and Local Government Secretary, has repeatedly promised an end to fortnightly collections and bin fines.

Yet since the election, 13 councils – covering half a million people – have introduced fortnightly collections.

And in areas with such collections those who overfill wheelie bins are typically liable to £100 penalties.

The bag quota regime is to be imposed by the Tory-led council in Wokingham, Berkshire, and is already in operation in Broxbourne in Hertfordshire.

Many of the 180 councils that still offer unrestricted weekly rubbish collections are watching the trial.

Wokingham officials have told residents that 75-litre sacks will be given to each household and anything not left in them will not be collected.

‘Every household will receive 80 bags every year,’ it said. ‘You can buy extra bags in rolls of ten but this will be deterred as a general practice.’

Families of five will get 100 rubbish bags a year and households of six or more will get 120. A council spokesman said yesterday that those who cannot keep to their quota will have to drive to municipal tips to get rid of their rubbish.

Read the rest of “Families are rationed to 80 bags of rubbish a year” by Steve Doughty at the Daily Mail

About the Author ()

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (33)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. Carol Henshaw says:

    I do not use any bin bags at all and any waste goes in small plastic bags that do come into the house e.g if food is packaged in them. They go into our bin and there are usually only 2 or 3 small ones each fortnight. We would never use 80 bin bags a year and if you are recycling everything that you can, composting and trying to reduce the amount of packaging coming in it is doable!

  2. Sooz says:

    I quite like this idea – I wonder if the bags will be biodegradable, like the ones we use. I’ve just done a quick sum and worked out that in our household of 2 we put out 1 bag of rubbish (not always full) every fortnight, which is 26 bags a year…80 seems an awful lot!

  3. LJayne says:

    I think this has some merit. I see that bigger households will get more than the standard amount and that is appropriate. I think you have to start somewhere if you are going to get people thinking about how to reduce their waste. Ie, are there bottle banks at their local supermarket so they could take some recycling there when they are going anyway, that kind of thing.

    We don’t use a bin bag a week. We have our wheelie bin emptied only about 10 times a year. That’s still more than I would like and I’m working on it 😉 I notice it is Tory Wokingham. We are Tory here and we get paid points for our recycling – our wheelie bins get weighed as they are emptied. The points are convertable to vouchers for local businesses.

  4. Karen Mattos says:

    This will not be a problem for me as I rarely put anything out for the rubbish collection anyway – one carrier bag a month perhaps.
    However, I have always thought those of us who do not use or rarely use the rubbish collection should be rewarded in some way (lower council tax or a rebate at the end of the year). I assume this scheme just means that people will have to do more for themselves yet the council charges will continue to rise. Like many things these day we have to do more and more for ourselves yet keep paying more and more to the councils.

  5. Karin says:

    I wonder what people put in 80+ bin bags a year. I’d have thought 52 would be plenty for most people unless they have a lot of nappies or similar items to dispose of.

  6. Just Gai says:

    Society appears to be divided into those who will make an effort when asked politely and those who need to be forced to do so. Our council (Bristol) has not only done a great deal to enable residents to slim their landfill bins but has also ensured that we are made aware of the facilities. We have black boxes for recyclables and brown bins for household waste. Plastic is the only waste that has to be carried to the nearest collection point. This has enabled us (until recently a family of 4, now reduced to 3) to cut right back on our landfill rubbish, which fills no more than one small (ie half full) black bin bag a fortnight. And because it doesn’t contain any food, it doesn’t smell or attract any undersirables. All it takes is a few minutes to separate our rubbish before binning it, but even this is too much for some people whose bins are overflowing with stuff that could be recycled. I’m afraid I have little, if any sympathy, for them. They have to wake up to the reality of crisis we are facing.

  7. Ben says:

    I believe our house of four adults could easily stay well under 80 bags a year, and that’s without doing all the waste reduction efforts we normally do. Just diverting most items that are collected for recycling by our local council (paper, card, plastic bottles, glass and metal cans) in to the recycle bin they provide and collect from our house should be enough as this covers most the bulky items. The restriction they’re making isn’t perhaps as tight as some replies on the DM site suggest. It is also not true that rubbish is now being rationed. We have always had restrictions based on the size of bins provided and frequency of collection.

    Personally however, I still would support the removal of rubbish collection costs from the council tax and instead a point of sale tax placed on all items to account for their disposal costs. Excessive packaging, single use items and all the usual rubbish offenders should attract a higher cost. No incentives to fly tip or avoid the disposal costs as the cost has already been paid, plus there would be pressure on manufacturers to reduce waste to bring their product in at the most desirable price, while people would be discouraged from buying these items too. If disposal costs were made a tangible part of every product we would quickly find the marketplace selecting out the better products.

  8. Jane says:

    Our Council has not provided black sacks for years. In fact I am still using up the rolls that we were given all those years ago. As a family of four adults we certainly don’t need 80 sacks a year!. We keep our non-recyclable waste in a small metal dustbin which is lined with a black sack. Rubbish from indoors is tipped directly into this. There is more space if you do not fill the bin up with tied carrier bags. When the bin is full, we tie the top and then when the Council collect they will take the black sack out of the bin and take it away. It is close the boundary and obvious.

  9. Alyson says:

    Why use the black bags at all? My rubbish is not put into any bag, it’s put straight into the bin. I asked the council, when I finished using up my carrier bags all those years ago, “must I really go and buy bags to put my rubbish in?” I was told it was a waste of money and defeats the point of reducing the use of plastic bags. I haven’t put my rubbish in a bag since.I haven’t had a problem with the rubbish flying past my window on a windy collection day. It doesn’t smell, it’s usually fiiled with plastic packaging that can’t be recycled like tubs, cheese wrappers, lids to jars of marmite and the occassional crisp packet. ( I haven’t bought yoghurt for a couple of years because I can’t recycle the cartons here). I managed to empty my, standard sized, bin 4 times last year as opposed the 26 otherwise, while all around me had their lids up, some of them after one week .( I must admit, I enjoyed the challenge) And yes, I did have the youngest jumping up and down every so often. 2 of my neighbours have 2 bins each and there’s only 3-4 in the house. What do they put in it? Even my husband was mildly intrigued. We’re a household of 5, one a teenager who keeps buying junk food, hence the crisp packets. I think households need an incentive to encourage them to reduce waste, such as a reduction in their coucil tax, but I know that’s not going to happen in light of the current economic situation. As for me and my apathetic household, we shall carry on trying to reduce our waste for the fun of it. So endeth the rant. My apologies.

  10. Rachel says:

    Hmmm, in theory it seems a great idea. The only issues I can see are: my parent’s council only collects food waste once a fortnight which means the smell in a hot summer is horrific and secondly, let’s applaud the government’s attempts to fill our ditches with landfill.

    I’m not sure the “heavy handed” approach will actually teach people to recycle more and throw less waste. People who read here are proabably the converts. Yes, my challenge of one bin bag a week for six of us is working well, but we know what we can recycle, we see the benefits of throwing less away, we have a car to take things to the charity shop, we have chickens and guinea pigs who eat much of the leftover waste.

    There are things that are needed to be done but education has to start before you sanction. You can’t punish people for crimes they don’t know they are truly committing or how to change.

    Just because you throw less bin bags out, doesn’t mean that those who can, will go to the tip – same amount of crap on the landfill just arrived privately rather than via the council.

    There needs to be an answer, but I’m not sure this is it. I need to think on this more!

  11. Rachel says:

    @Rachel: In fact, I blogged in response to this too!

  12. I didn’t link to the full article as I had read enough here to know that I like the idea. Sometimes we just have to be forced to act more responsibly and I am all for that. Easy for me to say though because I doubt I would fill eighty bags a year with a family of three. I would like to think that I would fill less than half of that and even then I think I should try harder.

  13. Jane says:

    We have to put our rubbish in a black sack not just the bin. Some neighbours just hang their residual waste in a carrier bag on their front gate. This works when it is our usual dustbin crew. I prefer to put it out less often and this works when they don’t try and take it more often.

    We have a weekly collections of everything – which isn’t necessary for anything. It is useful having a weekly food waste collection because if you were to miss that with a fortnightly collection then it would be a month whereas with a weekly collection it is a fortnight and that isn’t a problem.

    You can also find other ways to reduce your food waste – composting, bokashi etc.

    Many Councils subsidise compost bins and/or wormeries which help to reduce the amount of food waste too – and get people started. It is not something you have to do all the time…

  14. Karin says:

    I like Ben’s idea of removing “rubbish collection costs from the council tax and instead a point of sale tax placed on all items to account for their disposal costs. Excessive packaging, single use items and all the usual rubbish offenders should attract a higher cost. No incentives to fly tip or avoid the disposal costs as the cost has already been paid, plus there would be pressure on manufacturers to reduce waste to bring their product in at the most desirable price, while people would be discouraged from buying these items too. If disposal costs were made a tangible part of every product we would quickly find the marketplace selecting out the better products.”

    I think it would work, but might need tweaking. Perhaps added rewards for recycling would help, too.

  15. Julie Day says:

    I think in a way this is a good idea and might get people to think about what they put in their bins. I did a quick sum and worked out it be just over 1 bag per week.

  16. Antonio Pachowko says:

    I think for all committed recyclers 80 bags a year is way too much but for non-recyclers they will struggle. We all know of people that put out wheelie bins and extra sacks, and no matter what the Council does they will not change. Most councils can under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 can be fined £110 for producing excessive waste, but this is rarely enforced due to the British Public enjoying a good whinge (i.e Daily Mail Readers). I shake my head in dispair. I think and Carrot and Stick approach is required in that Households are rewarded for recycling QUALITY waste (not contaminated which co-mingling promotes and that required by the recycling companies i,e quality over quanity) and punished for EXCESSIVE production of landfill/EfW waste.

    I think education is also very important as we must change the bad habits of a life time without being too preachy. I think this is where peer pressure comes into effect. It is well known amongst Recyclling officers that Recycling in your street will increase due to peer pressure as non-recyclers see how many people recycle in their street and feel ‘the shame’ That they are not doing the same. It looks strange if yours is the only household in the street that does not recycle and you feel that something has to be done. i feel that excessive landfillers should be forced to either take a course of how to reduce their waste or be forced to spent a day working in a landfill site. You never know as this may change their mind as they would see the amount of waste generated. Councils in the London area are looking at introducing compulsory recycling (see
    http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listcatid=217&listitemid=57144&section=local_authority ) but I worry about the quality of the recycling.

    I wish that Eric Pickles keeps his nose out and his localism Bill could cause damage to the Waste sector. It has been estimated that weekly bin collection could reduce recycling rates by 7% to around 31%. Does he realise that this would result in fines being issue by the EU for every tonnes of waste that is landfilled. As you are all aware the UK had to reach a recycling rate of 40% by the end of last year or face a penalty of £150/tonne for every tonne under this target. This excludes landfill tax and disposal costs. In the localism bill these fines are to be fine by each local authority on top of the landfill and disposal costs. This would mean that councils will have to make a choice to either increase council tax or make severe cost savings on top of that already announced by the chancellor. Do people who do not recycle realise how much burden they are placing on the tax payer, and this is not using any green arguments.

  17. Antonio Pachowko says:

    There are problems with the proposed scheme as far as I can tell

    1) The scheme could promote fly tipping, which would require more policing by Councils. Councils have the power to charge fly tippers by issing fines up to £50, 000, seizing offending vehicles or in bad cases imprisonment.

    2) the bags are based on Volume i.e 75 litres and not mass, but the Government figures are based on weights. As you are probably aware the relationship between mass and volume is material sensitive and is measured by its bulk density. For example the bulk density of general household waste is taken to be 0.03kg/litre (but this is so depended on the composition of the waste). The problem with this is that a bag full of plastic would occupy a large volume but will have a low corresponding mass, so in effect the black bin bag would contribute little to the overall waste figures. As plastics are the hardest material to recycle this could cause resentment from local residents.

    3) there is a possibility of thefts amongst neighbours wanting more bags. This will definitely cause increasing resentment.

  18. Jane says:

    Isn’t it time that some recycling was made mandatory? The Coalition are busy pushing through all sorts of laws because they know that they have to act quickly before they become too unpopular and fall apart. This is the same whatever government is in power. It is our political society which means that so little happens – each party is afraid to give the others an advantage and as a consequence the country as a whole suffers.

    Who doesn’t have any recycling available to them yet? We would soon start to hear who thought that their Council was not providing good enough facilities. BUT most of this is packaging which comes from the supermarkets so why not take it back there? I don’t think we do pay enough for this packaging and it would be better if the price of dealing with it afterwards was included in the price at the outset.

  19. Jane says:

    Where is Government publicity that you are responsible for the amount of waste you make; that looking after it until it is collected is your responsibility; that flattening cardboard and crushing cans reduces the volume of waste; that you don’t have to buy everything wrapped in all that packaging?

  20. Poppy says:

    80 bags would most definetly be a waste here. I won’t go through the list of what we do, as I’m sure I’ve said it all before and most of us here do the same or very similar, but the sum of the residual waste that actually goes in to our giant wheelie bin is a filled bread or fruit bag every couple of weeks. So 80 black bags …….. no thank you Mr Pickles.

  21. Jane says:

    I think he is just trying to deflect attention from all the other cuts that this Government is making to the more vulnerable sections of society by closing Day Centres etc.

    Interesting to see from the Wokingham website that at present there is a fortnightly recycling collection which will be going weekly when the Council issued bags are introduced ( I didn’t see that in that article). Perhaps they will also add to this kerbside collection? They have recycling centres which are not accessible to pedestrians. They don’t seem to have much of service for collection of cardboard which for people without cars who buy online is a big problem. They do have some bring banks and they also have a community skip service which looks looks like a good idea and which could be taken up by other Councils. I didn’t notice a food waste collection. They have a link with info about green johannas and composters and green cones but don’t seem to have any discounted ones available at present. All looks pretty good to me!

  22. Mrs Green says:

    @Carol Henshaw: I agree Carol – and you’re leading by example; excellent stuff…

    @Sooz: I think 80 seems a lot too, but if you’re a family of 6 or more, perhaps it’s not …

    @LJayne: I didn’t know you had a sort of ‘pay as you throw’ system working where you are – are you getting vouchers? You should be – 10 bins a year is brilliant.

    @Karen Mattos: I think some areas, like Lesley’s – who commented above you – are offering incentives. If I had my way I would offer incentives instead of punishment. It would be interesting to see if the psychology changed behaviour.

    @Karin: For the average family I would have thought 52 would be ok too. but you know what? 3 years ago I would have got through more than 80 bags just for the 3 of us – yikes!

    @Just Gai: Lovely to hear you speaking so highly of Bristol council Just Gai; I must admit I’m impressed by what I’ve heard about them too. Your family is a great example of what can be achieved with a little thought and care.

    @Ben: Hi Ben, the idea of taxing items on the packaging is a thought provoking one – that really is ‘pay as you throw’. Where could the incentive to manufacturers come in do you think? If it’s the consumer who pays the packaging tax would the manufacturers be on our side for reducing waste?

    @Jane: We still have old fashioned bins which we have to provide ourselves – no wheelie bins. I guess that’s because we’re rural and many people still have fires, so use their ‘dustbin’ as a, well, ‘dust’ bin for ashes! We’ve never had bags …

    @Alyson: Loved your rant and you speak a lot of truth. I realised when we started our challenge that we were throwing away a lot of air. Once we started to compress thins (before we learned how to shop or recycle better) our waste was automatically halved by volume. It’s not rocket science!

    @Rachel: Hi Rachel, fortnightly food collections is not really acceptable. I’m off to read your blog as what you say makes total sense – I’m not for punishing either; I’m much more pro education and incentive.

    @Colleen (365lessthings.com): thanks Colleen; I think the time is coming where we need to step up education and perhaps, how can I put it, make decisions for people to help them reduce their waste 😀 It’s great that we are free to make decisions about our lives, but not at the cost of the environment…

    @Jane: Our dustbin men don’t collect carrier bags – only bins and black sacks! Agreed – there are lots of ways to recycle and compost more if the motivation is there.

    @Julie Day: I think it’s a start Julie. It’s a shame things have to come to this, but if people aren’t motivated to do things themselves, then perhaps more legislation needs to be put in place.

    @Antonio Pachowko: I agree Antonio that 80 bags for recyclers is very generous but it will be a challenge for non recyclers. your idea of sending people to work on a landfill site is great 😀 I know that even I would be wanting to reduce my waste and shop more carefully after experiencing that. Like you I would be concerned about flytipping and people stealing bags / putting their rubbish out with someone elses. However, the majority of people are honest so it would be a minor problem and like you say – peer pressure is one of the best incentives to change behaviour.

    @Poppy: What I’m finding interesting is that none of us here require anywhere near 80 bags a year. Yet on the DM, most of the comments are, against the rationing…

  23. Poppy says:

    @Mrs Green:

    The DM readers are a sub-species that should not be allowed to influence any decison making, but it would appear that certain sectors of our political hierarchy play to them and must enjoy the mayhem they cause! It reminds me of the some of the old films I used to watch on a Saturday afternoon, where the Greek or Roman Gods looked down from the clouds at the people below and played games with them by creating things like stormy seas and gusts of wind for their own amusement.

    The council here are moving on to the next step of considerate rubbish management with the introduction of brown bins for garden waste instead of the green bags that we’ve had for the last few years. The cost of £36 per year is causing many to shout, but we’re sharing the cost with our neighbour as neither of us would need the size of bin they are providing on a regular basis. Next stage will be the food waste bins, but as I’ve said before, we don’t do food waste, so that won’t be an issue for us either, but I can see my other half buying a chicken or some such item that does have unusable waste, just to make a point! All the more reason for me to strip the carcass right down, make soup and feed every possible scrap to the dog and cats 😉

  24. Jane says:

    @Rachel: The nose-high plastic wheelie bins with a mixture of food waste and green waste do stink particularly in the summer. My elderly mother has this system, the problem is stuff that can’t be home composted on the compost heap ie meat and bones. I don’t think she could cope with a bokashi bin or green johanna or green cone. Several years ago she could have. If I didn’t have a separate weekly food collection I would invest in one of these systems. Some Councils subsidise them.

  25. Jane says:

    Some positive comments amongst the DM replies: The Broxbourne resident (where the system was trialled) and the Canadian who had very little waste in her two person family but allowed her neighbours with kids to use some of her bin space “because that’s what neighbours do” were two that stood out most for me.

  26. Antonio Pachowko says:

    The problem with supermarkets and waste is the narrow-sightness of its policies. For example waste is produced by the manufacturer of the product (primary waste source), then waste is produced by the supermarket as they have to dispose of various packaging (secondary Waste) and then finally waste is produced by the buyer of the product (tetiary Waste). Supermarkets are only interested in its own secondary waste but often neglect primary and tetiary source of waste. In this way it is easy for supermarket to say that they are zero waste but if you take the products’ life cycles then you can see that this is far from the case.

    Waste can only be minimised if the whole cycle from product manufacture to produce disposal is taken into consideration. In these selfish times where everybody is blaming somebody else and have no responsibities I can see no practical way of doing this. Supermarket have too much power with the government,

  27. Antonio Pachowko says:

    I think it would also be a good idea in these time of belt tightening thst people are made aware of costs and the possible knock on effect on the council tax. For example disposal of waste to Landfill cost around £55-65/tonne but this is dependent on your location. This could be accomplished on the side of garbage lorry or even on the wheelie bin itself. For example it could say ” this lorry full of waste is costing you and other taxpayer over £500 per full load” or on your wheelie bin.

    For comparison let is see how much the recyclables are costing/saving us (per tonne):

    Food Waste: -32 to -48
    Garden Waste: -18 to -28
    If you can sell the compost : 3 to 12
    Mixed Paper: 75 to 85
    Cardboard: 90 to 95
    Brown Glass: 20 to 25
    Clear Glass: 25 to 30
    Green Glass:0 to 10
    Mixed Glass: 0 to 5
    Mixed Plastic Bottles: 160 to 210
    Textiles- Textile Banks :210 to 270
    Charity Rags: 460 to 610
    Shop Collections: 500 to 600
    Wood – High Grade: 5 to -14
    Low Grade -8 to -38
    Steel Cans: 150 to 175
    Aluminium Cans: 800

    You see how much money you can make and save if you recycle,

  28. Mrs Green says:

    @Poppy: Love the image of the Roman Gods causing storms at sea 😀 I didn’t know there was talk of changing your bins – it all seems such a waste of time …
    @Antonio Pachowko: Yes, there are challenges with getting people to take responsibility – we try to promote that idea here at myzerowaste, but it’s not easy when you say that there is primary, secondary and tertiary waste to be considered when looking at the whole picture. Offering incentives for recycling is the way forward I feel and yes, maybe we need to be more aware of the real costs…

  29. As a single person, I only produce about 1 carrier bag of landfill waste per week, and over 3 large clear sacks of recycling. If it was just me, I could easily avoid the new target, and produce much less waste.

    I face a problem as I currently live with my parents; I am engaging in a constant battle. Every week I have to dig through the bin to separate recycleables and fish out things I could re-use, and often i cant finish the job, as there is food waste in the bin too!
    I also have the pet problem; with quite a few felines in our house, we produce an enormous amount of cat litter, which my parents wrap in newspaper, then put into carrier bags; I have tried to convince them to do away with the carriers, and wrap simply in newspaper, then tranfer into our outside dustbin, but to no avail

    Everyday, I encourage them to change something small, to make a difference to the environment and hope that the resistance I face from them decreases. Its seems that they are too attached to their convenient ways to compromise.
    That said, I wont give up, and may not win one battle, but I will, eventually, win the war!

  30. Ben says:

    @Mrs Green: Hi Mrs Green, I do think as an idea it could get retailers on board as they are very concious of the point of sale prices for items, at least where there’s competition in the market. However, the actual calculations and the admin work would be massive, as much as VAT currently is, and the total cost per item would probably be tiny, maybe a fraction of a penny for many things. Considering even the higher projections for the cost per ton of waste, plastic bottles often weigh about a gram in total, and despite being a big consumer of landfill space would never carry a significant cost through such a tax. Many other items would have similar problems. Interesting thought experiment, but I think my idea is flawed in plenty of ways.

    Sharing out the costs fairly and making the major sources pay their share in the hope of discouraging their waste generation is a complex problem. However, the unaccountability of waste disposal costs at the moment is a big part of the problem that I do think needs to be reduced. The current situation is pretty much a public subsidy for the landfill disposal of packaging and products which have poorly, if at all, designed plans for their full life cycle.

  31. Jane says:

    @Antonio Pachowko: Our lorries now have information of some kind on them. Competitions for school children with the winning poster being used is good. Winning poster in the window of the local bookshop is good too. I’d like to see more posters up but find that the Council in the past was using their noticeboard space to provide an income rather than provide information on services. I’d like to see posters with information near street banks eg where you can recycle larger things (or things not recycled there). I’d like to see posters re litter especially in the parks. It appalls me the way that people feel they can eat a picnic there and then just get up and walk away from their rubbish.

  32. Mrs Green says:

    @Michelle Morgan: Hi Michelle, it sounds like you are very focused and determined and that’s great. I too started out by fishing things out of the bin and I salute you – I gave up much more easily than you. I think it’s great you are so motivated and I wish you luck. I know convenience is nice and I still fall for it myself from time to time, but you are making a huge difference and are very inspiring in your efforts x

    @Ben: I think you’re right – the cost of packaging can be so insignificant there is little incentive to trawl through paperwork and make adjustments for large manufacturers – this is where I feel a lot of the problem lies – in that convenience is often cheap too. I don’t know how we move out of this rut and move into a more positive place.

  33. Antonio Pachowko says:

    @Jane: You will find that most council lorries will have some advertisement for the benefit of recycling but they do not highlight cost. Things will work if people know how much it hits them in the pocket.

Leave a Reply