by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Surrey County Council believes it that could save up to one million pounds after cracking down on trade waste dumped at its recycling centers.
After a successful pilot at two of its sites the council is driving through a policy of making drivers of vans, pick-up trucks and vehicles pulling a trailer will be asked to carry a residents' permit.
The permit, which is free, aims to speed up the recycling of household waste and stop trades people abusing the sites.
Around 18,000 tonnes, or 13%, of the county's annual household waste entering the sites could be classed as trade waste costing about 1 million GBP, according to the council.
This means the firms creating this waste should be paying to dispose of it rather than council taxpayers.
Councillor for the environment, Lynne Hack, said: "It costs us a lot of money to dispose of business waste, which is a burden the taxpayer should not have to bear.
"Businesses should be paying to dump their rubbish and should not be sneaking it into community recycling centers at taxpayers' expense. The van, pick-up trucks and trailer permit scheme should put a stop to this.
"Traders who are caught with business waste will be directed to a transfer station with a weighbridge where their rubbish will be weighed and a charge made."
But, as with the scheme of using colored bin liners in some areas of the country where people then, when they had more rubbish than their allocation of bin liners took the waste to fly tip in the countryside and public parks, I can see the same happening in this case.
In fact, it is happening already and municipal and country parks are beginning to see an increase of trade waste dumped in their car parks and other areas of such parks and I am sure that farmers are experiencing the same.
This seems to be something that is never factored in, in the same way that personnel who manage parks and open spaces find that their litter bins are being used as a dumping ground for household waste.
© 2010
