Bin Your Rubbish Ideas! (Photo: Aylin Yazan)

The UK is set to introduce a rubbish idea - the "pay as you throw" scheme. Whilst the government's efforts to reduce garbage are commendable, their ideas aren't: businesses will still escape from their responsibility to rethink how their production impacts the environment.

Local authorities are planning to fit microchips to bins so that households producing more trash can be taxed more. The municipal bins would be weighed, and the chips would be used to identify where the trash came from, and residents would be charged according to the amount of waste they generate.

While green residents may like the idea, some households have shown their resistance and about 25,000 chips have been removed by people who dislike the idea of being under surveillance – their waste under close watch.

There is already massive public resentment at the way working families and pensioners are being punished by punitive levels of council tax, and now one faces the prospect of new rubbish taxes on top. Besides that, households will now have a criminal record if they fail to pay for their garbage or place it in the wrong place. The only escape is to throw your garbage into your neighbour's bag.

To make this nation a zero-waste country by 2020 and not a headache for those who can't afford to pay taxes or fines, I have a few suggestions:

Penalize retailers and businesses who continue to generate highly packaged or unrecyclable products. It seems ridiculous that local authorities are perpetually hounding householders, while businesses producing the rubbish are never questioned. Companies such as Tetra Pak should be held responsible for their unrecyclable multi-layered beverage cartons, which manufactures half of the four billion cartons consumed annually in this country. The government can't hold a consumer responsible for trashing a product with hard-to-recycle packaging, where is the justice in that?

Another option is simply to limit garbage collections. If councils collect garbage once a week, they should make it once a fortnight. This policy is sure to prompt people to limit the amount of trash they produce, or face rubbish piling up in their own houses.

The government needs to find more ways of recycling products. The UK, which recycles a quarter of its waste, is the third-worst recycling nation in the EU. Perhaps it is time the government took some tips off their neighbouring
countries like Germany and the Netherlands that recycle 70% of their waste.

Althoug households shouldn't pay as they throw, they can reduce waste in other ways:

- Get a compost bin if you can. According to government statistics, food waste forms over 27% of the average household bin's waste.

- Avoid trashing things like plastic bags and plastic jars – try to reuse them.

- Try to use products that can be recycled or have recycling packaging.

Rather than introducing a `pay as you throw` scheme and looking for ways to dig more money out of the pockets of citizens, the Labour Party should try something more innovative. And for Britons, to escape these charges, they
will have to prove they are responsible citizens. It is time we all got our act together and bin the rubbish ideas.