New bin taxes aren't a load of rubbish

There is a very good reason why people get so annoyed about rubbish collections: we all generate enormous amounts of refuse. Now the great rubbish debate has been fuelled by Environment Secretary Hilary Benn and his support for on-the-spot fines of up to £110 for people who overfill their bins, leave them out too early or put out extra sacks of refuse alongside them. On my road, alas, the one constituency whose insanitary way with rubbish could usefully be curbed - I refer to the foxes who eat their way through the bin bags - is not susceptible to fines. Perhaps a Hammersmith Hunt might work.

Fines can change bad behaviour when it comes to rubbish - though in happier days you didn't need them to discourage you from putting out your bins early. Cutting visits by the dustmen doesn't work. Last year some councils decided to collect rubbish just once a fortnight - arguing that this would encourage people to recycle more. What it did encourage them to do was turn out in droves at the last local elections to vote out the councils who took away their weekly collection.

For myself, I can't quite see why we don't go the same way as Ireland in encouraging us to recycle more and bin less. Ireland solved the great plastic carrier-bag problem overnight by the simple expedient of obliging shops to charge people for them. The same principle works for general rubbish. My mother has to buy a special bin bag from a local newsagent or supermarket to put her rubbish in. It costs E4, around £3.20. She stuffs the bag to bursting when she leaves it out every week, for collection by the private refuse collectors who issue the bags. If you want another collection, you could simply buy a bag from another company that collects on a different day. So, no involvement by the local council in the process, except to fine fly-tippers savagely.

By adopting this market principle, you do two things. Councils do not collect the bins, so you could scrap at least some of the council tax. And you have a financial incentive to recycle more and bin less. Of course, you'd have to monitor recycling bags to ensure they weren't used to off load normal refuse, but, on the whole, people recycle everything they should be recycling. There's no argument about rationing collections or about excessive numbers of bin bags. You just have to pay for your rubbish. It works.