It's interesting that you are still able to do that, there. Over here now, the eco-police in the form of the local council, would be liable to prosecute you. Under laws that were brought in in 1990, but have only started to be enforced since 1999, they can prosecute you for all sorts of garbage related 'offences', including leaving trash out on the street on the wrong collection day. My bin men come round at 7am, so everyone leaves their garbage out the night before. Strictly speaking, this can now be declared illegal, and subject to prosecution. A person was recently prosecuted, at a cost of £6000, for putting out her rubbish a day early, because she was going on holiday. In today's paper, there is a case of a man who has been fined £100 plus another £100 in costs, because a piece of junk mail with his name on it, was found in a bag designated as being for glass and tins only. The guy was actually taking part in the scheme voluntarily, but as a result, now has a criminal record, with all the job and travel-related implications of that. There was not even any CCTV or witness evidence to support the case and, despite the guy's insistence that he did not put the item in there, because it was not even his bag, the court declared the case proved. So how does nonsense like this encourage people to become more eco and recycle friendly ?
IMO the UK is becoming ever more like Nazi Germany. Where, in this case is the actus reus let alone the mens rea? I doubt they could prove that the junk mail was even delivered to the accused - a lazy postman could have dumped it there.
It doesn't. Bureaucratic abuse as in your examples is very common when the value of revenue enhancement exceeds the value of the crime. The garbage collectors probably had a quota of violations that were necessary to make their manager look good. Lacking the necessary violations, planting the junk mail letter would have been expedient. Aggressive enforcement also helps the legal system perpetuate itself with a steady case load. Meanwhile, recycling continues as a minor aspect of the revenue enhancement.
I don't have any brilliant suggestions as to how to solve the problem. At one time, the bureaucratic overhead raised the cost of recycling auto batteries to the point where it was cheaper to leave them by the road side, than to do the manditory paperwork. So, a law was passed requiring that an old battery be supplied with every new battery purchase. That actually worked quite well and has resulted in a high lead recycling rate. Something similar could be done for major appliances and general recycling. Turn in your old whatever before you can buy a new one, or pay a huge deposit, fee, tax, or whatever. In effect, remove the penalty cost of not recycling from the grossly inefficient legal machinery, and move it to the commercial establishment at the time of sale. If anything, it might create a demand for items to recycle.
As for the lead content in CRT's, we've had this discussion before. Briefly, there's very little lead in todays CRT's.
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At this time, all CRT glass manufacturers in the USA are shipping so called no-lead CRT glass. Unfortunatly, there is still some lead in these CRT's and some CRT's have a temporary RoHS exemption. I expect all CRT's to be lead free in about 5-10 years, but also expect the lead recycling fee to be permanent.
What glass enclosed lead is in the CRT is stored in the safest possible manner which will take many thousand years to extract. The standard test for leaching the lead out of glass requires that the CRT be ground down to dust, and attacked by caustics. The law is being applied equally to LCD's as well, which have almost no lead in the glass. The logic is that the recycling workmen cannot be expected to differentiate between a CRT and an LCD.
In California, we pay a $10 tax at the time of purchase on all CRT and LCD displays over 4" diagonal.
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In effect, we pay the recycling fees in advance. There are no added charges at the dump, and the tax allegedly goes to pay for the requisite special handling as anything containing lead is considered hazardous waste. Actual recycling and lead recovery is done by competative contract service companies. The proceedure for collecting the tax is 48 pages thick:
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which mostly deals with penalties imposed on merchants that can't decode the required collection proceedures. There are also Federal recycling rules which must be met:
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Only 108 pages.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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