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The borough's strategic manager street services Michael Moon said: "The cost to fit these once these bins have been delivered is much higher and logistically difficult to do."

Bugged rubbish bins 'will charge'

More than 30 councils are fitting microchips to wheelie bins ahead of possible "pay as you throw" schemes.
It is the latest attempt to encourage more recycling to curb the amount of rubbish that ends up in landfill.

Household rubbish would be weighed to within 500 grams on collection trucks and the chips used to identify which property the bin belongs to.

Councils are expecting to get the go-ahead from the government to start using the chips to charge residents.

Many local authorities are in favour of "pay as you throw" and are already anticipating the changes, according to the information uncovered by BBC One's Real Story.

But Paul Bettison, chairman of the Local Government Association's environment board, appreciates that certain councils have taken the wrong approach.

"Any council that's issued chipped bins and hasn't informed their residents I would say has scored something of an own goal. We need to work with the public and it's sad that seemingly some councils didn't," he said.

Once weighed, a bill for the waste would be sent to the owner.

Local authorities do not yet have the power to use the chips to charge people but have started introducing them in the expectation that they will be used.

The Mail on Sunday reported that an estimated 25,000 chips had been removed by disgruntled residents in Bournemouth.

Mr Bettison told BBC News in August that he expected weighing schemes to be commonplace across the UK within two years.

With an estimated nine years of landfill space left, councils up and down the UK are faced with a tough decision about what to do with the UK's waste.

Simply burying rubbish in the ground is no longer an option.

Local authorities face tough fines from the government on what they bury and by 2010 they will have to meet 40% of recycling targets to avoid EU sanctions.

In some areas recycling is now compulsory, meaning if people do not comply rubbish will not be cleared away and they could face prosecution.

Alternate weekly collections are one way of tackling the problem but they have not been warmly welcomed by residents who say councils need to collect the domestic waste more frequently.

Mr Bettison believes that if people want to keep weekly collections of all household waste they will have to face the reality that it is going to cost them.

"If you wanted us to collect both bins each week that would mean doubling the number of collections and that would add approximately £100 a year to your council tax.

"There may be people who wouldn't want to pay that."

Real Story's report on rubbish is on BBC One on Wednesday 4 October at 1930 BST.

And do councils really want to start charging us for the services we use, like a kind of menu? If so then I'll opt out of the school charges, could probably do without a few street lamps. Not too keen on our local welsh language officer so I'll do without that thanks.

Councils seem to be forgetting that they exist to do the things that are more effciently done by the collective rather than the individual. They are a service provider.

Lets get rid of the whole lot and let get municipal corporations competing for our business.

It seems so simple and logical that I assumed that this would be the case in GB. I was obviously very wrong.

It seems so simple and logical that I assumed that this would be the case in GB. I was obviously very wrong.

Dustbin spies sweep Britain
05/10/06
By Sarah Seymour and John Ingham

TOWN hall snoopers are secretly attaching spy chips to thousands more dustbins in a new bid to put up collection charges.

The bugs can weigh a bin’s contents which will allow councils to introduce a stealth tax levied on the amount of rubbish put out.

The "pay as you throw" policy is also aimed at residents who do not recycle their trash.

A pilot scheme started by one or two councils has now escalated as the microchips have been bought by 30 councils.

Many more are expected to join the campaign to turn wheelie bins into revenue raisers. The technology could be used to record exactly how much rubbish households throw away. Critics last night slammed the scheme, saying it will drive desperate householders to resort to fly-tipping.

Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: "This is another excuse to tax people to within an inch of their lives.

"You already have pensioners unable to afford massive council tax increases and cutting back on fundamentals like food and fuel. Now this new rubbish tax will squeeze people even harder.

"Councils should cut spending on non-jobs and crazy political correctness initiatives and spend the money on services that really matter." Tory MP Philip Davies said: "This should not be done by stealth. Councils should be up front about why and when they do this to give people time to prepare. The public would want to see that this was a different way of charging for the rubbish collection, not a new way of raising extra revenue."

Mr Davies said he was not opposed in principle to the use of the chips to promote recycling, but warned: "My biggest concern is that this could lead to more fly-tipping.

"If people feel they are going to be charged for what they put in their bin, they may chuck the rubbish over a hedge.

Supporters say the chip-and-bin scheme would encourage households to boost Britain’s recycling rate which lags behind that of many European countries.

Councils also face heavy fines from 2010 if they fail to meet European targets to recycle 40 per cent of their rubbish.

Peter Gibson of Keep Britain Tidy said: "If people have to pay to have their rubbish removed the temptation will be there to fly-tip.

"We will be keeping a very close eye on fly-tipping rates and can only urge councils to work with people to help them deal with waste appropriately."

Shadow Environment Secretary Peter Ainsworth said the chips were an interesting idea because without measuring waste volumes it was difficult to know the scale of the problem. But he warned that the public could end up paying for waste over which they had no control in the form of packaging.

He said: "Ultimately we should be reducing the amount of waste that comes into households in the first place.

"This is beyond the control of most householders. Retailers still have a great deal more to do in reducing packaging before we put further burdens on householders."

Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne warned councils to be responsible about charging.

He said: "Any council embarking on waste charging must ensure that it has a state-of-the-art recycling scheme.

"Councils cannot be allowed to use such powers to simply raise extra tax – if people waste less, they should pay less."

The move towards chip-and-bin is revealed in the BBC1 programme Real Story. Geoff Mountain, chief executive of PM Onboard, which manufactures vehicle weighing systems, told the programme: "Local authorities send their vehicles to us to install the weighing equipment. Weighing wheeled containers is relatively new in the UK. There is a principle in play throughout Europe that those who create waste should pay for its disposal.

"This is depicted through many parts of industry and it is now starting to affect household waste."

He added: "There is a strong case to say we have to change methods of how we dispose of our waste. Pay as you throw is an extremely fair way of achieving that process."

The company says there has been dramatic growth in demand for waste weighing technology as pressure increases on the UK to bring recycling rates in line with Europe.

Britain has only about 13 years of landfill capacity left, yet the country recycles a lot less than Holland’s 59 per cent while much of the rest of Europe is reaching more than 40 per cent.

An employee of the firm said in one interview: "The effective way to encourage improvement is to charge for the amount of waste that’s taken away from the house, or to give an incentive, such as credits against other council services."

He said that PM Onboard could provide the weighing equipment for the waste vehicle which enables it to identify a household’s tagged wheelie bin, verify by satellite that it is in the right place, weigh it as it is emptied, and send back the data on the spot for processing in terms of billing or a points reward scheme.

Councils raise £2million with draconian green fines
By STEVE DOUGHTY
Last updated at 20:30pm on 6th October 2006

Draconian new powers to fine people who dump rubbish has brought a multi-million pound bonanza for town halls, new figures showed yesterday.

Fines have added up to £2 million to add to local council coffers in just six months since the power to levy them came into operation.

Details of the way town halls have used the new laws showed that there were several hundred cases in which people were fined £100 for putting out their rubbish bins on the wrong day.

But councils said the fines were having the greatest impact on 'enviro-criminals' who drop litter, engage in fly-posting or leave dog mess in streets and fields.

Critics said the councils were using the fines to raise money. Christian Melsom of the Is It Fair? council tax protest campaign said: 'I am thoroughly in favour of cracking down on people who drop litter and make mess. But I think the councils are being suspiciously tough on people who break the rules when they leave their bins out.

'This is turning into a cash cow in the same way that speed cameras were exploited.'

Local authority officials were given the right to impose fines, including on-the-spot fines, by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act which came into force in the spring.

The law has run into unpopularity because it is widely regarded as an enforcement measure to whip into line householders who try to defy unpopular new rubbish collection schemes.

Recycling regimes that mean some kinds of rubbish are only collected once a fortnight, and the insistence by councils that rubbish is left in containers too small to hold the waste from a typical home, have led to more people leaving out extra refuse or using illicit containers and sacks.

The new powers mean council officials can quickly punish those who rebel. However Paul Bettison of the Local Government Association, the umbrella body for councils, said: 'Local authorities strive to keep where you live clean and tidy and will not tolerate people who commit enviro-crime.

'Larger fines and the ability to issue on-the-spot penalties are all being used by councils to make sure council tax is kept down and the environment protected.'

He added: 'People must realise they cannot get away with dropping litter, fly-tipping or failing to clean up their dog's mess. Councils are using the new powers to get tough on the minority of people who spoil the local area for the rest of the community.'

The LGA said that money collected from fines is being used to improve policing of litter and rubbish, including buying 'new technology to detect fly-tipping'.

The count of fines showed that there have been 16,118 penalties of £80 imposed for offences including leaving litter and fly-posting.

Another 611 fines have been issued to landowners for not removing fly-tipped rubbish from their land.

A further 290 £100 fines were given to people who left their household rubbish out on the wrong day.

Many people have been putting rubbish out early in areas where waste is now only collected once a fortnight to avoid keeping smelly and potentially hazardous refuse in their homes.

Another 611 fines have been issued to landowners for not removing fly-tipped rubbish from their land.

Now there are spy cameras at rubbish tips
CCTV system will record your car's number plate and what you are throwing out

By JASON LEWIS, Mail on Sunday
Last updated at 08:40am on 26th November 2006

Spy cameras are being installed at household rubbish dumps to check what residents are throwing away and to fine those breaking recycling rules.

How do you feel about living in 'Big Brother' Britain? Are these cameras justified? Tell us in readers' comments below...

The sophisticated CCTV systems are capable of reading and storing car number plates to identify who is using the dump, how often, and what they are disposing of.

But human rights groups condemned the surveillance as an 'unjustifiable' way of tracking people's movements.

The Big Brother-style tactics come as the Government puts pressure on local councils to cut the amount of rubbish sent to landfill sites. But the fear is that extra surveillance will only lead to more illegal fly-tipping.

The Mail on Sunday has already exposed the electronic 'bugs' secretly planted in hundreds of thousands of household wheelie bins.

Now sophisticated internet-controlled cameras are being installed at waste sites across the country. Officially they are to improve security, but council chiefs admit they will also monitor who is visiting the tips.

Several councils also say they will use camera evidence to mount prosecutions - raising fears more householders will be taken to court over what they throw away.

Cameras have been installed in Buckinghamshire, Croydon, Somerset, Dundee and Hertfordshire, and more councils are planning to follow suit after the £80million-a-year Waste and Resources Action Programme quango suggested they use CCTV to 'check vehicles visiting <\[>dumps] repeatedly'.

In Hertfordshire about 30 cameras have been installed at dumps, allowing council officials to check vehicle registration plates.

The county's assistant waste manager Mark Simpkins told a trade magazine: "The monitoring systems are invaluable. We use them to analyse...who is using the centre, what is being thrown away and how often." But last night his boss John Wood dismissed privacy concerns, saying: "I have not made the connection between our household waste sites and the wider debate about Big Brother."

However, local councillor Pat Whittaker said: "We have been campaigning for CCTV to guard against street robberies and anti-social behaviour - we do not need it at the local tip. These Big Brother tactics might discourage people from taking their rubbish for proper disposal."

Buckinghamshire and Somerset and County Councils have also installed number plate recognition systems at their dumps. Buckinghamshire council documents admit: "This may lead to investigation and possibly prosecution'.

Cameras have been imposed after the Government last year introduced a penalty of £150 a tonne on local authorities that dump too much waste in landfill sites.

Last night, Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said: "CCTV should only be used to protect high security installations - not to monitor a dump.

"This whole area is very poorly regulated. When you install an automatic number plate recognition system you are tracking people's movements.

"You need proper justification before you track people. I don't see how it is proportionate to use that kind of surveillance in the context of a recycling centre."

Looks like this one's becoming a hot potatoe.

Daily Express