Pay by weight for your rubbish collection

The Independent reports that 500 000 rubbish bins in the UK already carry an electronic device to identify the bin, which would allow the local council to track the weight of rubbish in the bin, and charge by weight for its collection. Which is quite a neat idea, I think. Our bin is hardly ever more than half full when it’s collected, so we should benefit from the billing system.

The Mail on Sunday doesn’t think so. Bins and the collection vehicles are being fitted with the new technology, and their headline is: Germans plant bugs in our wheelie bins. The article makes it sound like an act of war has been commited by the Germans, although in fact their only involvement is that two companies doing the fitting work on the bins happen to have their head-office in Germany. It seems to have generated heated views in the UK:

Conservative MP Andrew Pelling said burglars could hack into the computer system to see if sudden reductions in waste at individual households meant the owners were on holiday and the property empty. He said: ‘This is nothing more than a spy in the bin and I don’t think even the old Soviet Union made such an intrusion into people’s personal lives. ‘It is Big Brother gone mad. I think a more British way of doing things is to seek to persuade people rather than spy on them.’