The new Government will stop plans to introduce domestic “bin taxes” and instead reward households which recycle, according to CLG and DEFRA ministers Eric Pickles and Caroline Spelman.

The MPs, visiting a recycling reward scheme in Windsor and Maidenhead, said that the “bin taxes” planned by the last Government would have encouraged some people not to recycle more but to avoid the tax by fly tipping and burning waste in bonfires.

DEFRA secretary Ms Spelman said: “Windsor and Maidenhead Council have got it right by rewarding people for voluntarily doing the right thing, not penalising them for doing the wrong thing – that is how we can change behaviour, improve the environment and get people to play their part in a Big Society.”

The Windsor and Maidenhead scheme involves households volunteering to open a RecycleBank account and receive a new wheelie recycling bin with weighing equipment. They then earn 5.5 points for every kilogram they recycle, to be redeemed for discounted products and services locally. Residents in the trial increased their recycling by 35%, according to the Council.

Participation in similar reward schemes will be left up to individual councils, but the Government says it will encourage them to do so.

Friends of the Earth's executive director Andy Atkins welcomed the idea of rewarding recycling but said it must be part of a “wide and comprehensive waste action plan”, and added that charging people for waste generated works in continental Europe so should be done in the UK as well.

“But”, he qualified, “crucially we must urgently cut the amount of waste generated in the first place – we cannot continue to ignore the environmental and economic impacts of our throwaway culture.”

http://www.communities.gov.uk/newsstories/newsroom/1607787

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