Allowing rebates for waste reduction would be better than penalising bad practices, writes Duncan J. Martin
Bin charges are generally justified by the slogan "the polluter pays". Many question its applicability to the everyday activities of private citizens. Why not extend the idea? Should we privatise all schools, with the slogan "the breeder pays"? Would that not encourage responsible reproduction? And individual responsibility, such as home teaching? However, many children would not be educated at all.
Bin charges might cause more pollution through illicit disposal than they save through lighter bins. And who is the polluter, anyway? When I fill my bin with unnecessary packaging, I often have no real choice. The manufacturer or the retailer dictates the packaging.
The question becomes more pointed with an opt-in system of charging. The irresponsible citizen who opts out and fly-tips his waste pays nothing. The responsible citizen pays both for himself and for cleaning up after his irresponsible neighbour.
Who benefits from household-waste collection services? The council does not collect my waste as a favour but as a public-health measure. If it rejects my waste because I have not paid up, it penalises my neighbour as well as me. So bin charges are unethical and might well cause more pollution.
Can we not think of a better way? The simplicity of a wholly tax-based system, free to the user, is appealing. But we need incentives for waste reduction. A better system might be based on the following principles.
Set a compulsory flat-rate annual fee per household, no opting out. It would be simplest to fund it from a local property tax but that might not be politically acceptable. Preferably, use one collector in any area (perhaps the council) to reduce evasion and allow monthly payments by direct debit. However, if the fee were collected by competing waste contractors, each household could display a waste licence in a front window. The contractors would soon report defaulters.
The annual fee would allow for a set amount of waste. Then the collection service would encourage legitimate means of waste reduction by giving weight-based discounts for lighter or fewer bins than the norm. Refunds by weight would also be given for kerbside collection of clean, sorted recyclables. These discounts would then be deducted from the following year's fee. The discount scheme might also allow an adjustment for the number of household occupants.
The collection service could be municipal or private, with either one contractor per area or several. Collectors would give feedback on poor sorting. (This is done elsewhere: the stuff is simply handed back with a tick-list note of what is wrong.)
Regular cheats and the persistently unco-operative might lose any accumulated discount and be excluded from rejoining the discount scheme for, say, one year. A strong team of inspectors would be essential to educate, inform and, where necessary, enforce the law.
We might call such a system Waste Less, Pay Less. It would encourage waste reduction just as effectively as conventional Pay As You Throw but without the side effects of encouraging illicit means of disposal. Councils would be able to keep control of what was going on with Waste Less Pay Less, whereas they have little control under Pay As You Throw. However, the discounts and the recycling refunds would have to be generous to create adequate incentives and ensure that potential cheats would think twice.
Of course, no standard scheme can be ideal for all sectors of society. Isolated houses could not be served at the same fee as a city, while even in towns the fees would be unaffordable for the poor. So any scheme would have be flexible.
Local co-operatives might be allowed to opt out, subject to inspection and licensing. This would provide a way for rural communities to reduce costs without risk to the environment. Rural households not contributing to a co-op would be liable to a high flat-rate fee.
A nationwide rebate scheme would be needed for low-income households. Social-security benefits might be raised to include an explicit allowance for bin charges. Alternatively, the Government might pay the fee directly, in the interests of public health. Refunds and discounts might then be paid as a Christmas bonus to ensure the effectiveness of the incentives system.
This scheme is complex. However, Waste Less, Pay Less would be effective as it encourages the good rather than penalising the bad.
Duncan Martin is vice-chairman of the Irish Centre of the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management. He writes in a personal capacity.