Payment for recycling urged

A government survey of more than five million households has found that the British are ready to recycle like the best of the continental countries, if they are paid to do so.

The survey cost £3.1m million in taxpayers' money - equivalent to 58p for every household - and tested various types of cash incentives to make more householders co-operate in recycling schemes for their waste.

Ben Bradshaw, the minister in charge of the pilot schemes, said the trials showed that it was possible to produce a rise in recycling with rewards ranging from a payment of £25 per house in parts of Sunderland to £3,000 prize vouchers for holidays.

However, the findings published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show a patchy response to the expensive efforts to encourage more Britons to recycle bottles, paper, and plastics.

In the Tees valley, for example, householders were encouraged to recycle their glass bottles with a weekly prize of £50 worth of holiday vouchers in each authority and one overall prize from the 60 winners of up to the value of £3,000. It created a stir locally, but officials concluded it failed to work.

In Sefton, West Lancashire, only 60 out of 65,000 £5 rewards were claimed for recycling.

The report on the trials said: "It must be questionable to what extent the schemes can provide a sustained impact without long-term funding."