Tuesday 2 December 2008

The cost of eco-madness

Swindon Borough Council are facing a budget shortfall of £3.2M

"The cost of being greener will contribute to the bill, with a hole of around £500,000 coming from the difficulty in selling on recyclable materials.

As revealed in the Adver last week the council has a paper mountain in excess of 1,700 tonnes housed at its Waterside depot.

There is also an increased landfill tax of £296,000 because the council failed to meet its target of recycling 50 per cent of waste."

The Far East market for recycled paper, plastics and so on has collapsed as the global economy falters. The Chinese just don't want our waste. So what to do with it? As you can read above, you can no longer just bury it (although there is a huge landfill capacity in this country) as the EU has decreed that this is ecologically evil. Councils up and down the country are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can't move it elsewhere and will therefore get fined.

"Other costs include a £1m increase in utility bills."

And why have they gone up so much? Well that will be to do with having to cough up for subsidies on pointless wind farms, the renewables obligations, carbon trading madness and so on.

Ah well, it's all good for the planet apparently, just pain for the ordinary man and woman. Expect a council tax rise jolt wherever you live, coming to you soon in April.

Alternatively you could join the Libertarian Party and work towards a government that would ease the pain with sensible policies that will remove the state and the EU from our lives along with their futile and costly eco-madness schemes.

3 comments:

Alfred said...

Interesting facts, but don't blame Swindon Council. They are just implementing EU Landfill Directive 99/31/EC as interpreted by the UK Provincial Parliament.

Lorenzo said...

Couldn't they hide all that paper in the Old Town tunnels, I heard they threw all the speed cameras into Coat Water.

swindon_alan said...

Absolutely. What is wrong with burying paper and cardboard? It comes from wood after all. The last time I checked old trees fall down, rot and provide nutrients for new trees.

Even better, burn the stuff and get some energy out of it.

Oh and Alfred, I don't blame SBC at all. They are struggling against ZNL and the EU as much as the rest of us.