h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Our council tax has doubled in the 8 years we've been living in our house, which means, if you're familiar with compound interest, an annual rise of 10% when inflation has been less than 5%. Now we're to be charged for the same service twice?!!
We have always recycled as much as possible hoping to reduce our waste. White paper, tins, glass, batteries, plastic milk cartons all go in separate boxes. Kitchen waste goes in the compost heap. Kitchen 'not quite waste' - apple cores, salad trimmings, cooked pasta goes in the chickens. Cardboard etc goes in the green recycling bin.
I even have boxes at work for tea bags, bottles etc all of which I take home and recycle.
But it seems as fast as we try to cut the waste the amount of wrapping etc coming in to the house goes up.
For example, my sons CD player he got for his birthday came in a decent recyclable box, wrapped in a non-recyclable clear wrapper, with a plastic wraped moulded polystyrene tray inside and every part wrapped in a separate bag with those little tie things.
And what is it with suppliers who glue a non-recyclable plastic window into a cardboard box?
5 years ago the EC introduced a packaging management directive to cut packaging waste, apparently it's not working.
I'm sorry but most people don't care.
Our council introduced separate green and rubbish colections and after 2 years they were recycling 25% of normal household rubbish (now 48%). When this was announced there was uproar along the lines of what a total waste the dual system was only 25%. Um, but excuse me 25% recycled that would otherwise have been dumped I have no idea how many tons of rubbish that equates to.
People don't care.
My neighbour doesn't separate his waste, I've seen him put black bags of waste and building rubble into the recycling bin and compostable grass cuttings in the waste bin. The recycling is hand sorted so every time he puts one of his kiddies nappies in the recycling bin the whole truck load is dumped and that includes all the cardboard boxes and envelopes I have patiently peeled the plastic windows out of.
People don't care.
The fly tipping around here (an area of outstanding natural beauty we're assured) is out of control already. Beautiful presumably if you like rusting fridges and threadbare sofas.
Why?
Because the local tip introduced a 'trade waste' only day, so now if you turn up on that day in your car you're turned away. To the next field gate. But it's reduced rubbish we're told. But only because now the lanes are full of council trucks clearing up and they go in the back gate of the tip not across the weigh bridge so the tons of waste they bring in are not recorded so yes the amount of waste has reduced. And we've created some more jobs and had to raise the council tax to boot. Madness!
So here's my favourite all time example of how it goes so badly wrong.
I work on an industrial estate and though we don't create a huge amount of waste I collect and flatten all the cardboard boxes. Then I load them in the car and drive them 200 yards to the recyling centre. and one day I got turned away because it was trade waste and I should pay to dump it. I pointed out that it was all recyclable clean cardboard and that presumably the recycling centre got paid by the company that collected it - but no I had to go.
So I went to another business who produce loads of cardboard waste and asked them what they did as their business is actually just the other side of the fence to the recycling centre.
After they'd stopped falling about laughing this is what they told me.
They'd been turned away by the recycling centre too. So now they load their card onto their flatback truck, drive it 400 yards to the local skip company, unload it from the truck into a skip, which is loaded onto a skip lorry, driven back to next door to where it started out and the skip company are indeed paid to bring in a load of sorted cardboard.
Yes I try to avoid paying for packaging.
We have used proper shopping bags in our house for 15 years. I always refuse plastic bags unless I can't avoid it or get caught out by not taking enogh bags with me to the supermarket. Any plastic bags I do collect are folded and taken in to the local charity shop who are always glad to reuse them.
And what is it with supermarkets who let their staff pack for you? 1 apple - new carrier bag, 1 loaf of bread - new carrier bag (I exagerate but not by much).
But the bottom line with packaging is that the big businesses are too powerful to be taxed by government for producing the waste or pressured to stop - it'll cost jobs we're told, yes but only the jobs of the people doing all the unnecessary wrapping in the first place. So instead pick on the individuals who are powerless to do anything about it.
Example. Morrisons spuermarket hang their bananas on little plastic tags and put the price sticker on the tag. Ok says everyone it's just one little plastic tag and so they take it, you have too because the price is on it. But I bet if those same people had to shift all the many many boxes of little plastic tags Morrisons must get through in a year they'd think differently about it. Why don't the checkout people have a box to put the tags in to be re-used? I don't need the thing.
So now our bins are going to be weighed and we're going to be billed so there's going to have to be an accounting system and a complaints system so more people will be employed, sending out more envelopes with clear plastic unrecyclable windows, buying more office furniture wrapped in polystyrene and plastic, using more pc's with an 18 month life span.
You get the idea.
The new system will cost a fortune to impliment, a fortune to run, will create more waste and will cost the tax payer more for a problem they are powerless to prevent.
And one final thing, the plastic boxes provided by the council to put my recyclable items in......WHY ARE THEY NOT MADE OF RECYCLED PLASTIC!!!!
Rant over, time to take a pill and go and bang my head against a different wall.
L.

Nope, sorry, I couldn't possibly top that. I had so much to say but the above post says it all, and very possibly much more eloquently than I could.