Coming to a trash bin near you soon

jimpeel

jimpeel

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Two million households now have spy devices in their bins
Two million households now have microchips in their bins in a move by councils that paves the way for the introduction of a pay-as-you-throw bin tax.


By Alastair Jamieson
Last Updated: 3:56PM GMT 16 Mar 2009

Figures released using the Freedom of Information Act show 42 local authorities have installed the 'spy' devices in rubbish containers to record how much residents are throwing away.

Councils insist the information collected by the microchips, which measure the weight of rubbish placed in bins, will be used to educate households about cutting waste, targeting those who are the worst at recycling.

Opponents, however, say the technology will make it easy for the government to resurrect plans for the introduction of a £50 pay-as-you-throw tax on millions of families.

Recycling charges are part of the Government's waste strategy to encourage households to recycle at least 40 per cent of their rubbish by 2010, rising to 50 per cent by 2020.

The figure show two million households now have bins fitted with microchips. Joining them this summer will be residents of South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse whose district councils have put the devices in 100,000 bins as part of a new £8m waste contract in which bins will replace sack collections from June.

Sensors and weighing equipment fitted to the back of each rubbish lorry allow the council to collect data as each bin is raised. Information collected from outside each household is downloaded to a database that allows officials to monitor how much waste each household is producing for waste and for recycling.

Officials will then use the data to target errant streets and households. They are also considering publishing league tables of the best and worst roads for recycling. The councils hope to increase recycling rates from 43 per cent to 60 per cent.

Last year a similar trial of microchipped bins in South Norfolk failed after a series of computer problems and a huge increase in fly tipping.

Under the government's pay-as-you-throw plans, councils were offered the chance to give rebates to households producing the least waste or impose penalties of up to £50 on those who failed to recycle.

The trials would have begun in April but the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said not one of 388 councils had volunteered to test the taxes. Earlier trials last year using microchips in bins to assess the weight of rubbish produced by each household failed. Tory-run South Norfolk council, the first in England to pilot the scheme, blamed a combination of electrical, data, mechanical and hydraulic faults.

Bob Neill, shadow local government minister, said: "Using technology to make refuse collections more efficient worthwhile but I am concerned the government may use information collected in this way to put unfair pressure on local councils to resurrect their discredited 'pay as you throw' bin tax scheme by the back door."

Doretta Cocks, founder of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, said: "Devices like this make it easier for councils to enforce systems that residents don't want rather than thinking of new ways of waste of reducing overall waste."

Last month the Daily Telegraph disclosed more than a dozen councils have given bin collection crews GPS technology that allow them to store a history of information about individual rubbish collections, including whether householders are failing to recycle properly.

A spokesman for the Local Government Association said: "When an estimated £1.8bn of council taxpayer's money is going to be spent on landfill taxes between 2008 and 2011, it is vital councils find ways to stop waste ending up in the ground.

"Landfill tax costs councils £32 for every tonne of rubbish they throw away – a figure that will rise to £48 a tonne by 2010. At current rates of landfill, this will mean councils paying an extra £360m in landfill taxes over the next two years."
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Then again, there are those who will rebel against such intrusive measures.

SOURCE

Residents threaten to destroy bin microchips
Campaigner Doretta Cocks says angry householders are planning to dissolve "spy devices" put in bins by councils set on recording residents' rubbish


By Doretta Cocks, founder of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection
Last Updated: 6:33PM GMT 16 Mar 2009

Figures released using the Freedom of Information Act show 42 local authorities have installed microchips in the rubbish containers of around two million households to record how much residents are throwing away.

Many of our campaign members are incensed when they discover the presence of a microchip, usually hidden under the rim, and indeed they have gone to great lengths to remove them. From physically prising open the small compartment to remove the microchip to more elaborate methods such as trying to dissolve them in acid. The consensus is, however, that this is a step too far taken by local authorities to intrude into our private lives by monitoring the amount and type of rubbish we throw away.

The sole reason for microchips in bins is to weigh each household's residual waste and to bill them accordingly. Otherwise known as "pay as you throw" this is the preferred plan of policy makers for dealing with domestic waste. If we are charged for the waste we throw away the idea is that this waste will mysteriously disappear from our bins. It may well be the case, but where will it disappear to? Neighbours' bins, perhaps, garden bonfires on a scale never seen before or fly-tipped in our countryside. In trying to solve one environmental problem it will inevitably cause several more.

The Government has recently introduced legislation which allows local authorities to introduce "incentive schemes" such as "pay as you throw". When asked to participate in trial schemes no council applied to be considered. For the time being this idea is on hold. Councils are left with hundreds of thousands of micro-chipped wheeled bins serving little purpose other than as a receptacle for waste and so, it seems, they are going to use that information to carry out waste audits to see exactly what is being thrown away. Some councils will inform you that this is planned, others will not. The first you may know is when an advisory note is delivered stating you are not recycling as you should be. Punitive fines will surely follow if warnings are not heeded.

Increasingly, private companies are setting up in competition with council refuse collection services. Although people still have to pay that element of council tax in addition to the private charges, they are happy to once again be treated as valued clients. They can choose frequency of collection and have the satisfaction of knowing that their rubbish is collected once a week. They are not threatened with microchips, non-collection or fines. The one regret is that it makes the council recycling rates appear higher as it is removing waste from the domestic waste stream.

As a Campaign group we have always supported recycling but it has evolved from what was originally a worthy cause to an unhealthy obsession. Doubts as to what happens to these materials are increasing, especially in the current economic climate. Many feel they are wasting their time. Education and cooperation should have been the key factors in improving recycling rates. Now we have reduced collection frequency of residual waste (compromising public health), environmental enforcement officers (bin police), fines and microchips in bins.

If you do remove the microchip from your bin, please do as other campaigners have done – post it back to your Council!
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The recycling thing can be put to good use, though, in other ways than the companies in the article use it.

Around here, they give us a giant blue recycle bin. Every week, when they collect it, the computer weighs it, and gives us coupons to the grocery store based on how heavy it is. Some months we save like $20-30 on groceries because of it.
 
when i saw the thread title i was almost positive it would be about al gores new book on temperature variation
 
Look what is happening to the recycling industry in Britain. Recycling is a loser.


Councils dumping more than 200,000 tonnes of recycling every year
Household rubbish put out for recycling is being dumped in landfill sites or sent to incinerators by three out of four councils, a Daily Telegraph investigation has discovered.


Recycling business unable to sell waste goes bust
A recycling business that was left with a mountain of waste it could not sell on has gone bust


Recycling industry in a slump
The once booming UK recycling industry is in crisis. Mounds of now worthless tin cans, paper and plastic bottles are piling up in warehouses, attracting rats and posing a fire risk. So what happened? Asks Jimmy Lee Shreeve.


Councils left with recycling mountains as prices dive
Household rubbish could be stored in abandoned military bases and airfields after a collapse in the market for recyclable materials.

Councils scrapping recycling services in wake of down turn
Councils across the country are scrapping recycling plans following a global slump in the value of waste materials.
 
That's what happens when you make recycling a business, based on profits instead of an investment, based on the future.
 
Bish remember who you are talking to! I don't think he is capable of conceiving in reasons for doing anything if it isn't for a hefty profit margin.
 
The recycling where I live kicks ass. I hardly have any actual garbage left after all the stuff goes in recycling.

I imagine jim goes out of his way to not recycle though.......and maybe punches a baby in the face while he does it.
 
randomJACKASS said:
Bish remember who you are talking to! I don't think he is capable of conceiving in reasons for doing anything if it isn't for a hefty profit margin.
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That's why I like that we brush closer to socialism than you do. If you make it 'not-for-profit', and even out the bumps in the economic road with some GVT support, then you have a company doing a service to the benefit of all.

Reducing waste going into landfills is a positive thing, as if reusing paper, metals, plastics, etc...all of which are cheaper to re-work/re-use than to produce from scratch.

If the company makes a profit...the surplus goes to GVT coffers for other projects. If it loses money, it receives from a more productive centers.

You hire people, stimulate the economy AND get rid of garbage/pollution. Win Win Win
 
MrBishop said:
....benefit of all....
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:barfonu:

That's blasphemy to a hardcore conservative! His tax dollar should never benefit anyone but himself! By god if one dollar of his tax money helps keep your grandma's heat on he'll get hoppin' pissed!

When it comes to the far right, the term "compassionate conservative", is an oxymoron. It has never and will never exist. The core of the philosophy is ruthless selfishness.

"As long as I get mine, fuck everyone!" and, "I'll gladly fuck over anyone to get mine."

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that anyone here is that hardcore but I'm not saying they're not. That's a matter for each person's personal conscience. I have known some that live by that philosophy though. I've worked for some. They are usually very talented, very driven and extremely successful, and very rich. They have some definite strengths, but as people I never met a one who is actually happy. It's simply a never ending quest for "more".
 
randomJACKASS said:
Bish remember who you are talking to! I don't think he is capable of conceiving in reasons for doing anything if it isn't for a hefty profit margin.
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yet, like many other grandstanding advocates of individualist capitalism, is strangely incapable of describing the mechanism behind that hefty profit margin. no matter, we'll simply name-drop "warren buffett," in a near-mythical tone, and all will be resolved.
 
spike said:
The recycling where I live kicks ass. I hardly have any actual garbage left after all the stuff goes in recycling.

I imagine jim goes out of his way to not recycle though.......and maybe punches a baby in the face while he does it.
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Nice ad hom.

I don't recycle. Doesn't take me out of my way at all. I put it all in the trash bin and they can have the prisoners from the Sheriff's honor farm sort it. If I have to pay to house and feed them then they can do some work for me.
 
randomJACKASS said:
Bish remember who you are talking to! I don't think he is capable of conceiving in reasons for doing anything if it isn't for a hefty profit margin.
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You my friend are absolutely correct.

I expect you to start a non-business, using your own funds while never expecting profits, soon. You'll be a huge hit.
 
MrBishop said:
That's why I like that we brush closer to socialism than you do. If you make it 'not-for-profit', and even out the bumps in the economic road with some GVT support, then you have a company doing a service to the benefit of all.

Reducing waste going into landfills is a positive thing, as if reusing paper, metals, plastics, etc...all of which are cheaper to re-work/re-use than to produce from scratch.

If the company makes a profit...the surplus goes to GVT coffers for other projects. If it loses money, it receives from a more productive centers.

You hire people, stimulate the economy AND get rid of garbage/pollution. Win Win Win
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Studies have shown that it is cheaper, and creates less pollution, to mine the bauxite, smelt it into aluminum, ship it to the point of manufacture, and turn it into new aluminum cans than to recycle the aluminum cans in circulation.
 
Got a link to the study?

Cause I'm finding different info.

Virgin aluminum has an environmental cost of $1,900 per ton. Recycling is very effective for aluminum, eliminating 96% of the energy used to produce a ton of new sheet stock. The environmental cost of recycled aluminum is $310 per ton. The substantial decrease is due to eliminating the mining and smelting process.
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http://www.iere.org/ILEA/lcas/Tellus.html
 
It takes about the same amount of energy to recycle aluminium as it does to go from bauxite to aluminium...but it's not the process that does the savings...it's getting the source-materials. I'm not sure if you're familiar with how aluminium is made, but it's not the same as steel.

I'm just finishing a project at work now aimed specifically at Aluminium Foundries - I know too damn much about the process now. :p
 
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