Pay by Weight Fiasco!!!

The object of Pay by Weight was and is to encourage people to think about the waste they create and introduces in practical terms the “Polluter Pays Principle”, that is if you create waste you pay for disposing of it. The majority of domestic waste that people produce is reusable and can be recycled or used as compost, and are what as known as green waste and brown waste. The remaining waste is called general waste and normally went to landfills, which are now being closed off, and rightly so, as a waste solution by EU directives. As a large proportion of householders did not and do not segregate their waste, preferring to put their food waste or indeed all their waste into the general waste Pay by Weight was introduced. While Pay by Weight is a seismic shift in how householders look at their waste, with most seeing the merits environmentally, they are not willing to pay extra to do so. Unfortunately there are costs involved in implementing a regime that penalises the polluter, involving extra bins for each household, the kitting out of refuse trucks to be able to weigh each bin, the additional costs of  extra bin rounds for the collection of the more diverse bins, the extra administrative costs etc. For those who recycle and diligently manage their waste this may seem unfair, as their charges may rise, but not as much as those who do not waste segregate or recycle and place all their waste in the general waste. As with all new regimes that increase costs the public have a right to be cynical and sceptical, and it therefore rests with the enforcement agencies to ensure that the bins are monitored and that enforcement is not dependent on the waste service providers or members of the public. For Pay by Weight to succeed, equity and enforcement are critical and sadly it would appear that those who were responsible for introducing the concept are failing both to educate and inform the public as to the rational and merits of Pay by Weight and to explain how they will police the new regime and what penalties and sanctions  will apply to those who do not abide by the rules and refuse to respect and care for our environment. The polluter has cost us environmentally and is now costing us financially…how much that will be rests with the department, the waste service providers and the enforcement agencies!