The British Retail Consortium (BRC) claims a nationwide DRS could cost £1.8billion a year, plus the expense of establishing the required recycling infrastructure, and it suggested the industry will pass on these costs to customers through higher prices.
That doesn't make it a bad idea, or mean that the scheme shouldn't go ahead, if we are really serious about pollution in the enviroment.
Scotland has already been forced to delay the introduction of its scheme until 2025 under pressure from businesses and a dispute with the UK government on how it should operate.
I took a walk along a canal a week or so ago, and the unsightly plastic bottles floating around in the water or discarded in the grass of the local park really showed up our throwaway society. It wasn't for lack of rubbish bins, either. Since we can't seem to educate people to not do this, then this makes sense, no matter how much the supermarkets whine.
It worked years ago - surely we can make it work now?
I'll gloss over the whole "massive amount of pollution involved in recycling" which usually gets swept under the carpet as it's acceptably NIMBY in some poor country full of brown people and not on the tourist bucket-list. But ...
ReplyDeleteThe reason, I believe, 'people' throw rubbish 'now' is ... the whole "I pay the council/government to do that so I don't have to" mentality.
As a child, being brought up in the era of dad sending me out to shovel the snow off the pavement in front, not only of our house but, every pensioner within three miles (possibly a slight exaggeration), mowing and weeding said pensioners gardens, and mum chiming in to send me to carry all their shopping ... I still get looked at askance by neighbours when I clean and mow the verge in front of my house (stuff the neighbours, they're younger than me and 'I'm' the pensioner now. Sigh!).
Their comments about "you paid council tax for someone else to do that" being met with both "what, you mean the three guys left working for the council being ordered around by the legion of Karens in the office" and "well Council tax wouldn't be as exorbitant if everyone picked up after themselves" seems to ... leave them confused and/or contemplative.
Point? When people abrogated their responsibility for 'their' areas and environment to others (to make a profit from. What you think 'free' ever actually is?) they 'voluntarily' gave up any 'ownership' of it - and you wonder why Schwabb et al think they can do as they are doing?
It worked in the past because people were both independent, communities existed, and people 'owned' their own areas. All that is long gone, and (possibly) never to return in most areas (especially the cities, it still, to an extent exists in small villages where, amazingly, there is the least council/government 'help' and 'services' - I wonder why).
"All that is long gone, and (possibly) never to return in most areas..."
DeleteWell, maybe. Maybe not. It can come back:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/02/we-dont-need-police-the-new-forest-village-taking-the-law-into-its-own-hands
So now local authorities will not get the money from the recycling of valuable materials. But they will still be responsible for dumping the rest of our valueless waste.
ReplyDeleteCentral government who will decide which favoured big recycler will be paid to take away this valuable source of revenue.
What could possibly go wrong.
So we pay extra to the shop who has to provide a complex facility for accepting the containers, reading some bar code that the shop has to add before selling the original product, (so use crushing your cans to save volume, and taking broken bottles back will be pointless - just drop them outside the shops recycling thingy).
Then we will pay for a while new branch of civil service who will monitor and regulate the system.
Then local rates will rise to cover the dosh previously got by flogging off the valuable waste. Aluminium is very valuable.
Then before you get a credit, not real money, for your returned container.you will have to register your details. So guess who is going to find out about your drinking habits. Big Bro and Big Nanny.
*weeps*
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