Tories to pay people to recycle in green revolution

Householders will be rewarded with cash incentives for recycling at home under radical new Conservative plans aimed at tackling global warming.

By Andrew Porter, Political Editor
People will accumulate points for the household waste they recycle and be able to use the points to claim up to £130 a year in vouchers from major retailers like Marks & Spencer and Tesco.
It is estimated that the financial incentives could help raise household recycling rates nationally by at least 30 per cent a year.
A rise in recycling would in turn mean less rubbish simply being dumped in landfill sites. Councils are currently taxed by the Government for every tonne of waste they send to landfill.
The Conservatives claim that the savings in landfill taxes would fund the cash voucher plans, which have been piloted successfully in the Home Counties and would be extended across the country under a Tory government.
The move is to be announced in a speech on Tuesday by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, as the Tories attempt to show they are willing to lead the way on the green agenda ahead of next month’s Copenhagen climate change summit.
The recycling plan will be the centrepiece of a raft of measures that also include:
* cutting carbon emissions in Britain by 10 per cent within a year
* creating the country’s first ‘green investment bank’
* introducing Green ISAs, encouraging investment in green technologies
* making Whitehall energy consumption ‘transparent’.
The Tories claim that the Government’s desire to encourage more recycling has backfired with the advent of bin taxes.
Labour has overseen a rise in the number of councils using schemes and fine systems that have antagonised homeowners, rather than encourage them to recycle more.
“Carrots work better than sticks,” Mr Osborne will say. “Instead of punishing people, as Labour do with bin taxes, the Conservatives want to encourage families by paying them to recycle.
“This isn’t an idle promise - we’re actually making it happen on the ground in Conservative areas. Now we want to make it happen everywhere.”
The Conservatives have piloted the voucher scheme in the Tory-led council areas of Windsor and Maidenhead where recycling points can be redeemed online and spent at hundreds of local shops.
The pilot echoed an American scheme covering materials including paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal. Residents are issued with special blue roadside recycling bins, the contents of which can be scanned and identified by the waste trucks picking them up. The scanner in turn identifies the address involved and allocates recycling points for the rubbish collected.
The points are then loaded onto a computer database which can be accessed by residents to collect redeemable points. It has enabled residents to earn a maximum of £130 per year in vouchers and discounts.
Mr Osborne hopes extending the vouchers scheme across the country will buck the trend of greater amounts of rubbish being sent to landfill sites.
At the moment, 37 per cent of household waste in England and Wales is recycled, up from just 7.5 per cent in 1996. But landfill taxes levied by the Government are still set to rise from £40 a tonne to £70 a tonne in the next three years.
The Conservative plans to increase recycling rates are likely to be welcomed by many councils who fear that they face swingeing European Union fines if they do not cut landfill.
The other measures Mr Osborne will announce include what he will describe as “the most ambitious commitment on UK government emissions ever made”.
“It will save up to £300m a year in energy costs, which will be used to help tackle Labour’s debt crisis,” Mr Osborne will say
“How telling it is that Alistair Darling has not given a single major speech on the environment in the two and a half years since he became Chancellor.
“That attitude is going to change if the government changes. I want a Conservative Treasury to be in lead of developing the low carbon economy and financing a green recovery.
“For I see in this green recovery not just the fight against climate change, but the fight for jobs, the fight for new industry, the fight for lower family energy bills and the fight for less wasteful government.”
He will also trumpet three major corporate backers to the plans. Tesco, BT and B&Q will provide a future Conservative government with expertise on how green objectives can be reached and how homes can be made more efficient and in the process save on household energy bills.
To help achieve those aims he wants a new green investment bank “to get new technologies out of the lab and into new businesses creating new jobs”.
The ‘green’ bank would bring together the public money that is divided across a number of current Government climate change initiatives. It would also bring in private sector money which would be used to create jobs, encourage innovations and encourage companies to invest in Britain.
Green ISAs (Individual Savings Accounts) will also be used to encourage members of the public to invest in green technologies.
Under the new green Tory plans, details would also be published online of the energy consumption of every Whitehall department so that the public can hold ministers and civil servants to account for their carbon footprint.
The Tories have been reluctant to push their green credentials since some of their earlier ideas including supermarket and airlines taxes backfired.
But the raft of new policies shows they now believe the public will accept new measures to help the environment as long as they are considered fair.
The Conservatives have decided to unleash a raft of other green policies this week.
On Thursday, Grant Shapps, the Tory housing spokesman, will explain how the Conservative will make 25 million existing homes “green” by offering insulation and energy efficiency improvements.
In another significant move, Greg Clark, the shadow climate change secretary, will finally commit the Tories to nuclear power. He is preparing to say that “clean coal and nuclear” will be at the heart of their future energy policy and will be immediate legislative priorities.
On Monday, Andrew Mitchell, the shadow development secretary, said the Tories would scrap a £750 million a year tax break that enables British companies to invest in ‘dirty’ power stations overseas.