Wasting the Waste?

There are recent reports that government is 'rowing back' on its suggestions that there must be incentives [either charges for excess production or refunds for 'good' behaviour] to get householders to reduce the amount of rubbish that is generated to go into landfill sites across the UK (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6240119.stm). This, unremarkably, seems a consequence of widespread objections to the current suggestions including claims that modifying collection patterns might jeopardise human health (plagues of flies and rats?), that it is difficult to come up with a 'fair' scheme that does not penalise larger/ younger families, that the schemes might well encourage people to 'fly-tip' on waste land, that some householders might attempt to cheat by incorporating their rubbish into that of their neighbours etc etc. All of these are potential problems but there is little doubt that landfill capacity is finite and wasteful (and European legislation is likely to make it an even more expensive option). There is a need to encourage recycling (where that is a viable option) as well as encouraging the generation of less household waste per se. Rubbish is a real problem for a small, crowded island particularly as we don't seem to have collectively developed here a perception of rubbish generation as being an anti-social activity (as is evident e.g. in Germany).