Recycling Rewards

Posted on November 24, 2009 by bobpiper

I’m not totally opposed to Gideon Osborne’s proposal to offer incentives for people to recycle. The ‘incentive’ of M & S vouchers, as with many of Osborne’s ‘initiatives’ strikes me as a bit strange, but if people take the trouble to recycle their household waste then the notion of rewarding them in some way for the effort is not exactly new.
Some local authorities, of all political persuasions, have used the savings on landfill tax generated by recycling to hold down council tax payments. In one sense that seems much more a Tory notion, not taxing people so much and allowing them to spend their own money as they see fit rather than issuing food coupons or whatever Osborne envisages.
In my own Ward a new co-mingled recycling system was introduced and it has proved very popular. One of the benefits of the landfill tax savings this brought about was that we were able to use some of that money to give the Ward a ‘deep clean’ with a thorough cleansing of gutters and pavements, weeding and cleaning up grot spots and clearing up the general detritus that builds up on inner city roads and pavements. It isn’t that much different to Osborne’s suggestion, but it does mean recognising the benefits to the community of a neighbourhood contribution to recycling, as opposed to the individual reward scheme which seems a bit bureaucratic.

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15 Responses to Recycling Rewards

  1. jailhouselawyer says:
    November 24, 2009 at 5:23 pm

    If only the recycling people called when they should, and didn’t miss out my street. I now have a black box and two black bin liners out front waiting for collection!
    Definitely no more parties until Xmas!
    Today they were supposed to replace the black box with a blue wheelie bin. Just as well I didn’t hold my breath…

    Reply
  2. DLL says:
    November 24, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    Jailhouse lawyer why don’t you email your local authority ( Google is very helpful if you don’t know the email address – just type in the name of your council and recycling)instead of bitching about it here?

    Reply
  3. iain ker says:
    November 24, 2009 at 8:33 pm

    I’m sure you’re aware, ‘Comrade’, that under our rather ‘porous’ recycling legislation, as soon as waste for recycling is picked up from the kerb that waste has been deemed to have been recycled. If it then ends up in landfill or as ballast in a container ship, or dumped on a foreign beach it has still been ‘recycled’.
    The public being conned yet again (cf green taxes, windmills, global warming)

    Reply
  4. ignatio says:
    November 24, 2009 at 9:53 pm

    No it isn’t, you thick prat. But don’t let that get in the way of your conspiracy theories.
    I’m with Sean earlier Bob, send this idiot packing back to guido or dale, let them have him. If you keep answering the dickhead he’ll just keep returning with ever more ridiculous comments.

    Reply
  5. plar says:
    November 24, 2009 at 10:56 pm

    Why do you call him Gideon? Should we call you Aloysius? That is, after all, not your name, much in the same way Gideon is not his.

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  6. Bob says:
    November 25, 2009 at 12:25 am

    Plar… because it was his name, and he clearly hates it…. and it gets up the noses of Tories.
    Hey… who told you my middle name was Aloysius.

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  7. Chas says:
    November 25, 2009 at 2:07 am

    Dear Robert,
    I am very supportive of your campaign to use people’s real names so that they cannot hide behind dishonest sobriquets which totally discredit them. I know that Anthony Charles Lynton Blair and our fabulous prime minister James Brown utterly concur. I also know that the former Labour prime minister and soviet agent James Wilson was very much on your side too, as of course is Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn, the former second Viscount Stansgate. Former chancellor Denis Winston Healey must be immensely proud of his middle name and is right with you; Sir Richard Cripps was very much a convert although he liked to call himself Stafford, much in the mould of Edward Dalton, otherwise known as Hugh. And that other former prime minister Leonard Callaghan thinks you have an important point. Even the first in your long line of catastrophic prime ministers, James MacDonald, is on side.
    So Robert, what exactly is your point?
    Thank you for listening Robert.

    Reply
  8. Chas says:
    November 25, 2009 at 2:13 am

    Dear Robert,
    Further to my last post, I am so glad that your strategy is to get up the noses of Tories. Most of us have huge noses with plenty of capacity for cretinous socialists to get up, and it sure beats you having any policies with which to take us on. Long may you be up my nose; please eat my bogies while you’re there.

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  9. Bob says:
    November 25, 2009 at 7:39 am

    Charles, dear, I think your comments rather prove my point. Lol.
    I really don’t know why people get so uptight about it. I was christened Robert, and that’s the name a lot of people use (although in recent years my mother and sister appear to have started calling me bobby), but others use Rob, Bob, and even one person at work who refers to me as Robbie. Can’t say I’m bothered one way of the other, personally.

    Reply
  10. Chas says:
    November 25, 2009 at 9:37 am

    Dear Robert,
    Prove your point? You have a point to prove? Really? What exactly is your point, except for not having one (and not having anything substantive with which to take on Gideon Osborne)?
    My point, since you don’t seem very good with points, Robert, is that most of your beloved socialists also hide behind other names, but that it probably doesn’t matter. What does matter is that all of them have contributed to ruining this country (especially any who have had control of the purse strings) and people like Gideon Osborne are charged with trying to repair the dreadful damage. Sooner or later all socialist governments run out of your money.

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  11. Bob says:
    November 25, 2009 at 10:11 am

    Where’s the keep net? We’ve landed another one! Reel him in!

    Reply
  12. Sean M says:
    November 25, 2009 at 10:45 am

    Bob, stop it. I have pointed out elsewhere that what you are doing with this childish back chat is simply challenging the idiots to keep coming. Try to rise above it. This blog is a decent read, but if the comments columns are going to descend in to the idiotic ramblings we see on guido and others you will turn people off.

    Reply
  13. iain ker says:
    November 25, 2009 at 11:07 am

    ignatio said:
    November 24, 2009 9:53 PM | permalink
    No it isn’t, you thick prat.
    ********************************************
    Yes it is.
    Sorry to burst your bubble.
    And stop calling for censorship you Trot/Fascist.

    Reply
  14. Frugal Dougal says:
    November 25, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    I’d certainly be in favour of this, as opposed to Labour doing what it’s always done and treating the public like a cash cow, this time wrapped up in specious righteousness. And you can’t fault M&S sarnies.

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  15. jailhouselawyer says:
    November 25, 2009 at 1:02 pm

    Well the new blue recycling bin has arrived, plus 2 x waste food caddies, plus the waste paper coming through the letter box telling me how to use the recycling bin etc.
    Still the council has not removed the recycling I have left out for over a month!
    I called the council and they suggested I put it all in the new blue recycling bin and they said they will collect it in 2 weeks.
    If they have missed it for the last two times what faith do I have in them collecting it in 2 weeks?
    DLL: Have you not thought of recycling yourself?

    Reply