Bin patrols to slap f ines on families who don’t recycle

FAMILIES who refuse to could be slapped with a fine under the first scheme of its kind in England.

Thousands of households face the punishment if officials on bin-bag patrols catch them throwing away packaging that could be recycled.

Bath & North East Somerset council has threatened to introduce the ‘formal enforcement’ after the local authority declared a climate emergency last year.

Three councils – Islington in North London, Mid Devon and Swindon – have made recycling mandatory but no English council has ever imposed a fine for not doing so before this.

Councillor Sarah Warren, cabinet member for climate emergency at Bath & North East Somerset council, said: ‘We want to become carbonneutral through a raft of measures, including reducing waste by encouraging recycling and discouraging the use of single-use plastics.’

In Wales, Swansea residents face a £100 fine if they are caught failing to recycle. Council officers there go house to house shaking, but not opening, black bin bags to listen out for possible recyclable items.

According to new figures published by the Department for Environment,

Food and Rural Affairs, households across the UK recycled only 45.0 per cent of waste in 2018, dropping from 45.5 per cent the year before.

This is well short of a key EU target of 50 per cent by the end of this year.

Wales recycled 54.1 per cent of its waste in 2018.

Scotland had the lowest recycling rate in 2018 at 42.8 per cent – a decline of 0.7 per cent from the previous year.

Only Northern Ireland bucked the wider UK trend and saw its recycling rates increase in 2018 – rising to 47.7 per cent.

Bath & North East Somerset’s proposals come as the Government seeks to enact its Environmental Bill, which sets out to tackle unnecessary waste with a range of measures including setting statutory environmental targets.

Last year, The Mail on Sunday revealed how families are being misled by confusing recycling symbols on packaging.

The Green Dot logo appears on hundreds of supermarket products and is thought to boost sales, because shoppers think it means that the product is recyclable.

But the symbol means only that the company has paid towards a recycling scheme, not that the packaging itself can be recycled.

Some residents already being hit with £100 tickets