Crackdown on household waste could lead to fines of £1000

New government rules were unveiled today, which could land you with a £1000 penalty fee if you fail to comply.

Using the wrong bin to discard your rubbish is the crime which may attract this fine under the new legislation. Households could soon end up with over five different bins for their waste. This includes a slop bucket for food waste.

Households will be required to sort through their rubbish before throwing away for anything that can be recycled, reused or converted into electricity. People who continually break these new rules are the main targets for the £1000 fine.

This new legislation proposal comes from environmental secretary Hilary Benn whose aim is to banish all food, cans, paper and glass from landfill sites in an attempt to slash greenhouse emissions.

The Tories criticised the idea with the Conservative environment spokesman Nick Herbert saying “We need to divert waste from landfill and more food and farm waste should be used to generate energy, but the way to achieve that is to encourage households by rewarding them to recycle.”

About 55 per cent of household waste ends up in landfill sites. This new scheme would save councils money on the landfill tax charged for every tonne of waste. The other issue this would solve is the problem of finding new locations when existing landfill sites are full.

While recycling rates increased dramatically over the last decade the rate has slowed in the last two years leading Benn to create this new idea. He said, “We have made good progress, but we can go further”.