Another cunning plan from Mike Freer

Thanks to Barnet's most sensible Tory, Don't Call Me Dave, for drawing my attention to Barnet Council Leader Mike Freer's latest bonkers proposal. Mr Freer said the following on radio 4 yesterday.

“Mr Resident, that full wheelie bin is costing you, the taxpayer, £300 a year in landfill tax. Tell you what. Have a half size bin, recycle more and over the year if we find that you are not putting out side waste at the end of the year we’ll give you £100 or £200 back.”

Yet again Mr Freer exposes his great weakness as a leader. What on the face of it sounds like a great idea, soon fails once you start thinking it through. Once you bring this scheme in, it's not just a question of saying "here's your new bin, now sign up for your discount". Let's consider the costs & problems

1. You need a whole department to administer it. You'd need a database containing details of every dwelling in the borough and what size bin they've got. To maintain this database, you'd need a team of people, office space for them, management, HR etc. As people move in, move out, get married, divorced etc the names need updating. It cost the council £45,000 to send out a healthcare survey to all the borough's residents - that's a one off flyer. How many letters will be sent out for this scheme.

2. Who qualifies for the money? Is it the householder? What happens in a shared dwelling, such as a shared flat? Who get's the refund when a couple divorce?

3. What happens when you have 2 binfuls of waste? Do you get charged double?

4. What happens when your neigbours put rubbish in your bin? We've all seen what happens to skips. We had one and I caught a neighbour filling it up at 4am.

5. What about the environmental impacts and social nuisance caused when everyone starts having bonfires to burn all the rubbish they were putting in their bin?

Now if Mike really was a sensible Tory, he'd have come up with a sensible scheme to cut waste. Where does all of the waste come from? The supermarkets. Make every resident in the borough register with their favourite supermarket and then make the collect the rubbish. The supermarkets have loyalty schemes. They have delivery services and databases. The residents would have to pay the supermarket a fee, but the shops could refund this via their loyalty programs.

I'm not a Tory, but I'd bet anyone a million pounds that if Tesco's and Sainsburys had to collect the crap they make us buy to get our sausages it would save us all a packet and be far better run than anything Freer could cobble together. They'd also have a vested interest in not supplying the rubbish in the first place. Simple rule, you run a multinational chain of supermarkets, you have to clean up your mess.