Cash rewards are to be offered to householders who throw out less rubbish than their neighbours. Wasteful households are to be charged more for dumping excessive amounts of rubbish under incentive schemes announced yesterday by David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, to persuade more people to take recycling seriously. The measures are aimed at reducing Britain's annual mountain of 100 million tonnes of rubbish dumped in landfill sites. One idea floated in the waste strategy report is for lockable wheelie bins to stop neighbours throwing rubbish in next door's bins.

Every household in the country could have at least five bins in the future to allow separate collections for glass, paper, cans, plastics and food waste, though not garden refuse, as part of a recycling strategy announced by Mr Miliband. Mr Miliband also wrote to Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for the environment, calling on him to review the provisions of the EU packaging directive, allowing councils to take more effective enforcement action against "clear cases of excessive packaging". Britain is also considering tougher recycling targets for packaging, he said. Councils also got the green light to collect waste only once every two weeks.
(By Colin Brown, The Independent, 25/05/2007)