Bin tax touted as environmental measure

Yeah they did the same here, most of our articles from the struggle are archived at http://www.struggle.ws/wsm/bins.html including ones that address the environmental arguments.

In retrospect it might have been as idea for the campaign here to have argued for a revenue neutral tax based on income to get around the environmental argument although to be fair only a few Green Party types ever took the environmental argument seriously.

BTW nearly fours years after the collapse of the campaign there are still a lot of working class areas, including where I live in Dublin, where most people are not paying and where our bins are still collected every week. So although the jailings of 2003 and the local elections rows might have disintegrated the campaign as a unified entity but it was by no means a simple defeat as not only were a number of concessions won to make the tax at least somewhat related to rubbish generated but a lot of Dublin working class are also around 900 euro ahead. We have having a general election today so its quite possible that non collection will spread in the near future.

The reason the general election today is relevant is that its probable part of the reason the government backed off non collection was that Fianna Fails vote from the Dublin working class was quite big but is being lost to the Labour Party, the Socialist Party and Sinn Fein. As they only just have the numbers to form a coalition government the loss of a few Dublin seats because you have been busy suppressing a popular struggle in them on the eve of the election would be a big problem (remember we have PR here). Once/If back in power they can move against these areas and then have four years for people to forget before the next general election.

The alternative is that they are collecting enough revenue and are happy to wait for the rest to come in via lump sums paying off arriers when people sell their houses. People need to clear any debts of the house to get the legal paper work done so maybe the maths work out OK in that regard in terms of needed revenue.

The only other possibility is that they are afraid that moving on these areas will spark off large scale social unrest (aka rioting). While this is not impossible its quite unlikely and in 2003 they were jailing nursing mothers for blocking bin lorries so they probably have the 'balls' to take that small risk.

Compulsory recycling starts Waltham Forest from 10 September:

http://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/index/environment/rubbish-recycling/recycling/compulsory-recycling/compulsory-recycling-faq.htm

It's starting.

This has been in place in a fair few boroughs already. Hackney' did that a while ago.

Some places are introducing incentives - like if you recycle you could win £100 - others are bringing in fines for everyone who doesn't. One guy in an optional recycling area got fined £200 because an envelope fell into the non-paper part of his recycling. Quelle surprise he stopped recycling after that.

Our recycling hasn't been taken away in 3 weeks. But luckily we get daily rubbish collections as we live on a main road.

Fines for people who don't recycle? Ridiculous! We've had recycling in the main cities over here for a few years now, but there's no incentives or fines - it just gets collected weekly with the refuse. Personally, I recycle as much as possible, but mainly coz that way you use less rubbish bags which are fucking expensive (they only pick up official city council bags).

Some places have chipped bins that measure waste somehow.

Yeah and we've got next door's weely bin at the moment since they got swapped a few weeks ago.

Lewisham's the only borough in London (or something) where you don't have to separate your recycling. In a house of 5 (plus various girlfriends and friends sleeping on the couch, coming round and ordering pizza etc) we actually had the reverse problem of having too much recycling for our boxes. Now I've gone doubtless the place will descend into chaos again under the supervision of D** from the formerly moderately successful pop punk band G*****t***.

you have a friend in a punk band

cool

The band in question actually split up so no. And he's not really a friend. Well I do kinda like him but that's despite him being in a moderately successful pop punk band. That's more of an injoke between me and friends of mine who visited my house. The band in question were utterly appalling btw. They were one of those "big on Scuzz and P-Rock but not the real world" bands.

I thought that was the case in most boroughs - that workers sort it as they chuck stuff into their trucks. It is in Hackney anyway, and Camden.

I would've thought it'd be more efficient to have all rubbish taken away and then sorted centrally, maybe with just wet/food waste separate.

You're supposed to sort it in the box, obviously that's a shit idea since it's near impossible, but I imagine if they start fining people for not using the boxes, the next stage will be for messy boxes.

Bin-chipping is yet another example of how ID/surveillence is fast becoming part of everyday life and I think its important to oppose bin taxes on those grounds too.

Plus in a campaign I'd want to get across people shouldn't feel guilty about their individual contributions to waste since so much of is created at the front end by producers who package stuff to the hilt and sell us products that are made to be disposible or so badly made that they break down unnecessarily, whose sell by/use by dates on food often make no sense, processed food that goes stale a day after it's bought - just so we are encouraged to buy more of their crap. All this rubbish sold by us by capitalists who profit at the expense of the environment and then we are expected to pay to clear up the mess? Bollocks to that. Plus if we had social living and used/stored things in bulk we wouldn't need tiny packages, etc etc ... basically turn this around and point the finger at the system, and make it clear if they introduce a bin tax we'll empty our bin bags outside the local council building (not in our streets or neighbours bins, and being careful to remove envelopes and personalised junk mail first).

Recycling varies massively from one area to another. Alan is right - Lewisham council collect it all in one bin (we have a wheelie bin) - and it is separated at the depot - it's not done by the workers as they load it onto the truck. As it's loaded into a normal refuse crusher it's clearly going to be bulk grade recycling, rather than any quality.
Some boroughs recycle all food waste in separate composting bins. By most accounts, the UK is about a dozen years behind most of Europe on recycling. While I've some sympathy with the environmental arguments, the idea of charging extra for rubbish and recycling collection is just another way of cutting council services and should be opposed.

Regards,

Martin

The local state bureaucracy is trying to make what is a problem of capitalist society something we have to pay for, in our pockets and by our having to endure even more micro-control over our lives. That's enough of a reason for an anarchist to oppose bin/waste taxes. It's really not the duty of revolutionaries to find solutions for better dealing with waste when the root cause is capitalism and our being forced into a way of living that is inherently wasteful of the world's resources (for those that are lucky enough to be able to consume more that we need, anyway). Obviously if they are incinerating rubbish in your backyard you can oppose that too. I'd just like any campaign of this kind to be as antagonistic as possible and not let anyone feel guilt tripped in anyway. Spying by council councils using bin chipping is just one more kind of divide and rule - dividing us into good and bad citizens.

I actually disagree Jack. I don't think anyone really likes the idea of having chips in their bins. Apart from anything else, I'd say it's a pretty inefficient/provocative allocation of council funds.

little_borther:

agree - I think a tax - paid for by manufacturers - on packaging would be more effective than penalising people for not sorting their rubbish, most of which we have little choice in accumulating.

On a wider note, I hate the way environmentalism has now turned into a kind of puritan individualist lifestyle code - and, as Jack says, a way of extorting more cash from council tax payers.

Yeah front page article in metro today which looks like it's going to slam "environmental" taxes and products for consumers, not read it yet though...

hmmm ... yeah, read it in the Metro too. Most people will always say they pay too much tax and that the taxes are raised and/or distributed in an unfair or dishonest way, regardless of whether it's green taxes or income tax or council tax or even fines from speed cameras.

But how to conduct an anti-tax campaign without attracting right-wing loonies like the "Taxpayers' Alliance"

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/

Re: Taxpayers' Allliance:

One of the founder members "[Florence Heath] currently works as a geologist for an international petroleum company."

So, no conflict of interest over green taxes then?

One of the others was a member of the LSE Hayek appreciation society and another was a Tory politician on Westminster council.

send the troops in on the lot of them!

I don't really think revolutionaries should dominate our arguments against bin taxes with discussion of fairness/unfairness of taxes nor fall foul of the anti-tax of the libertarian right. For me, the main issue to fight on as a class struggle anarchist is the sheer hypocrisy of the idea that this is going to make much difference to the destruction of our environment. I wasn't talking about some high minded 'civil liberties' opposition to bin chipping either - more a hatred of civil service bureaucrats thinking its fine for them to measure our lives when the excessive consumption of the rich goes on regardless (never mind that these inequalities mean many people are in poverty because they can't afford to consume enough to live healthily).

An opposition to social control angle is out there but mostly only the right-wing is articulating it as far as I can see (with a heavy dose of climate change denial like that of the anti-road pricing lobby), but same as with ID cards left libertarians shouldn't leave the bin chipping angle in the hands of the right and right it off as an side issue to taxation. Class struggle anarchism/libertarian communism is not just about economics, but about recognising the attacks on freedom by an overpowering state. I'd go as far as to say if a campaign of this kind is only framed as a economic/tax issue it would be unworkable.

http://www.gmb.org.uk/Templates/PressItems.asp?NodeID=96109