Strapped for Cash
Public bodies across the country are always complaining that they are 'stepped for cash', that vital services are sometimes under threat because they don't have enough money to meet their statutory obligations.
But here's a recent article from The Times which tends to confirm what many people know already which is that these pleas are often self-serving and that not every public pound is well spent.
It's not rocket science after all, only rubbish collection.
Council tax could be reduced by £61 per household per year if authorities improved their collection systems - Photo James Glossop (The Times)
By Ben Webster - The Times
More than £200 million has been wasted by local authorities buying different types of bin because they cannot agree on standard sizes and colours, a study has found.
Each bin costs £5 more than the same type and quality of bin in Germany, where authorities pay 25 per cent less by co-operating on purchasing.
Council tax could be reduced by £61 per household per year if authorities improved their collection systems and stopped sending recyclable plastics, electronics and food to landfill, according to the report by the Green Alliance.
The environmental think-tank said that councils were wasting residents’ money by insisting on bespoke bins and failing to agree common standards, such as the colour of bin for a particular type of waste.
In a report entitled Wasted Opportunities, it said: “In Germany, all bins are the same. The high volume makes the unit cost cheap. In the UK, few local authorities jointly purchase bins, and many insist on expressing local preferences through bin colour, embossed logos and the like.”
Dustin Benton, co-author of the report, said that analysis of 40 councils’ policies on procuring wheelie bins showed that only two had co-operated on purchasing. Many people were confused by recycling policies because they changed frequently and differed from one authority to the next, he added.
When people moved home, they often found that their new council recycled different types of waste or had a different collection policy.
Some collected plastic food packaging while others did not. Some demanded that items were separated into different bins while others collected all recyclable waste in the same bag.
Mr Benton said that the ten councils in Greater Manchester issued bins in six colours for the same type of recyclable waste. In Hackney, east London, the council issued green plastic boxes for recycling and then replaced them with larger green plastic boxes. It later removed the boxes and told residents to use green sacks instead.
The report said that the failure to co-ordinate recycling was partly responsible for the lack of progress in improving recycling rates, which rose by just 0.2 percentage points to 43.2 per cent in England between 2012 and 2013.
“The result is that £1.7 billion worth of plastics, food and electronics is lost to the economy. If all this value could be captured by local authorities, council tax could be reduced by £61 a year per household.”
Only 30 per cent of plastic packaging is recycled and two thirds of that is sent overseas for processing because there are only five plants in Britain that are capable of converting it into reusable material.
