Media Scare About 'Bin Chaos' Omits a Dirty Truth
by Christopher Booker

In the acres of newsprint devoted in recent days to the chaos engulfing our rubbish disposal system, one crucial ingredient has been almost entirely lacking. This is a proper explanation not only of why we have got into this mess but why it is going to cost us billions of pounds, including huge fines to Brussels that, on official figures, will soon total more than £1 billion.

When, in 1999, the EU decided to phase out the land-filling of waste with its Landfill Directive, this was always going to hit the UK much harder than anyone else, because we have traditionally put much more of our rubbish into holes in the ground than other countries. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with that, since it has been used to reclaim large areas of land that might otherwise serve no useful purpose.

Two main instruments were used to enforce this policy. The first was that, under the directive, each country was set targets for reducing landfill, with hefty fines by the EU for anyone failing to meet them. By 2010 these will be £150 for every ton of waste by which a local council exceeds its target.

The second instrument, to encourage us to meet our targets, was the landfill tax, which Gordon Brown has just increased over the next two years to £32 a ton, a rise by next year of 33 per cent. The Local Government Association has just released figures showing that over the next four years this will cost council taxpayers £3 billion.

Despite this, however, we will still be so far short of our EU target that the National Audit Office estimates that by 2013 we shall be paying £205 million a year in fines to Brussels. Within ten years those fines (again payable by council taxpayers) will have amounted to well over £1 billion in addition to the billions of pounds we shall be paying in landfill tax.

Unlike any other country in Europe, in short, we shall be hit by the Landfill Directive with a massive double whammy. That is why the newspapers are full of ridiculous measures being taken by councils in a desperate effort to increase recycling and reduce our dependence on landfill. In fact, as I reported last month, much of this is based on bureaucratic humbug and statistical juggling. Much of what is shown as being collected for recycling is not being recycled at all. It is either being shipped to the Far East, or is still being quietly put into tips here in Britain, but in such a way that it doesn't show up in the official figures as landfill.

If the newspapers currently running campaigns on "bin chaos" really want to do something about it, they could begin by explaining just how this disaster has arisen. It does seem crazy that we should all be having to pay £3 billion in the next four years, in a vain bid to avoid having to pay a further £1 billion in fines as a free gift to our EU partners - all because our politicians should never have agreed to this dotty system of waste disposal being imposed on Britain in the first place.
The Sunday Telegraph, 29th April 2007