Rubbish politics

Surveillance chips in our bins? Even though I'm quite pleased at the idea that MI5 might be forced to spend their days going through my rubbish , it's irritating that yet again we're being distracted from the real problem. Reaction to Big Brother Watch 's report has focused on issues of surveillance, privacy and personal taxes while the wider environmental arguments once again are overlooked. You should feel sorry for poor old local councils, who have had the whole enormous waste problem dumped unceremoniously in their laps and who are expected to deliver all sorts of targets and standards. You should feel even sorrier for the poor old consumer – that's you – who is being held responsible for Britain's massive rubbish problem. We're expected to recycle, reuse and reduce, while the real culprits are just wandering off with their hands in their pockets, whistling. In fact household waste makes up just 14% of the waste produced annually in the UK. But it's a very attractive segment for government to go after because it's easy to measure (almost all household waste is collected by local authorities, so it's reasonably standardised and centralised), because the problem can be delegated to local authorities, and because voters will think that government is taking action, without realising that that action focuses mainly on them. In the meantime we do not even have precise figures on what business and industry are doing with their waste. A hotchpotch of commercial waste companies around the UK gather up rubbish in a hotchpotch way and get rid of it … well, we don't really know that either. It's been three years since Defra published their waste strategy , and they still haven't got their heads around this one central problem – how to find out where the rubbish is coming from and going to. In fact, even household waste can, to some extent, be laid at the doors of our industrial and business sectors. Who produces the labyrinths of packaging that we throw away every week? Who puts the kiwis into little, individual nests on the supermarket shelf? Now what has the government done about this? The answer, you'll be surprised to hear, is not a huge amount, because they're worried, as usual, that forcing companies to clean up after themselves may stop them from growing. There is an obligation of "producer responsibility", but most companies deal with this at the moment by paying the waste company that takes their rubbish away to recycle it, rather than reducing waste during the production process which is what we desperately need to be looking at now. Similarly the government has held back from passing regulations to reduce packaging or plastic bags, preferring to go the voluntary route, which is slower, and much much less effective. There are signs that business leaders are beginning to realise that cutting back on waste could save them some money. According to one analyst, "waste minimisation" is one of 2010's buzz-phrases, which is a good sign. But relying on businesses to deal with this all by themselves seems like a slow and nervous way of taking action. And in the meantime councils are apparently inspecting my binbags and tutting over the empty toothpaste tubes. Licence to landfill, anyone?