Households in England should be made to pay for the amount of rubbish they throw away and be banned from putting plastic in their bins to boost recycling, UK government advisers have urged ministers.
Domestic recycling rates in England have stalled at about 45 per cent of waste since 2012, leaving significant amounts of rubbish still being sent to landfill or burned at incinerators.
The idea of a 鈥減ay-to-throw鈥� rubbish scheme was ; it would use microchips on bins to weigh rubbish and rebates on council tax as an incentive to recycle more. But after criticism, and .
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Now the concept has been put back on the agenda after the Advisory Committee on Packaging (ACP), an expert group appointed by the government, said it should be explored to minimise waste and spur recycling. Another option would be reducing the frequency of 鈥渂lack bag鈥� waste collections, the group said in a response to on consistency of recycling across England, seen by 快猫短视频.
鈥淧ay-as-you-throw could increase householder involvement in waste issues and introduce a market mechanism 鈥� money 鈥� to influence their and business鈥檚 waste generation,鈥� says Deep Sagar at the ACP. He says the measure would probably cut the total waste each home generates, similar to reductions seen after the聽 implementation of a 10 pence charge on single-use plastic bags in England.
Sagar suggests that the idea could be tested in a small area first. The potential downsides of the approach, he adds, are primarily the cost of administering such a scheme, and the risk of people dumping rubbish illegally instead of reducing their waste or recycling more.
The UK鈥檚 Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs told 快猫短视频 that it has no plans to introduce pay-as-you-throw, but would be using powers in the environment bill currently going through the UK Parliament to make collections more consistent regionally. 鈥淭his will make recycling easier and ensure there is a comprehensive, consistent service across England, reducing recycling confusion and ensuring more recycled material is used in the products we buy,鈥� said a Defra spokesperson in a statement.
The ACP lamented a 鈥渞egrettable lack鈥� of engagement with households on how to curb waste and improve recycling rates. Pay-to-throw should be accompanied by a ban on putting plastics, textiles and electronics in household rubbish bins in England, the committee said in .
The ACP also says that a deposit return scheme planned for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2024 should be paused, to learn more first from Scotland鈥檚 experience of its own scheme starting in 2022. The committee argues that such a scheme could be too costly and the measure might reduce how much people recycle at home.
The UK is no longer obliged to hit European Union recycling goals, including a mooted 70 per cent target for 2030. However, recycling rates will have to be boosted to hit the UK鈥檚 net-zero climate target, and tackle the twin challenges of and . There is also a growing realisation that the UK will soon have to deal with its own recycling, as a growing wave of countries to which materials for recycling are usually exported have plans to ban plastic waste imports, as Turkey did in July.
UK supermarket Tesco signalled one possible road to cutting plastic waste on Monday, as customers at 10 of its stores in the east of England will now be able to purchase products in reusable packaging. The partnership with US firm Loop covers products from pasta to beer, allowing people to buy 鈥減refilled鈥� containers and return old packaging for cleaning and reuse.
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