Over the last few weeks many of us have received letters from our skip companies explaining some quite steep rises in the cost of skips. We got ours the other day, from £168 per skip we are now being asked to pay £220! A rise of £52.

There has been a recent change in the way landfill is being taxed which now makes the majority of all waste non-inert and can be taxed in the highest bracket. Bit of a dirty little tax this if you ask me. The Government of course will say that we all need to be doing more to recycle and put less in the ground. And they do have a point.

We can all be doing more. We have our PVC taken away and recycled by Ecoplas but in terms of other materials we can do more. We used to have our timber taken away by a guy who used to take it and turn it into fire wood for outdoor burners for a number of people. But he either lost interest of we had too much for him to cope with because he has stopped and we can’t find any other person or company who takes away old timber. We do take old aluminium and steel windows to the scrap merchants, which is nice handy cash when it builds ups. But when it comes to glass, like timber, it is just put in the skip.

One thing which has baffled me, is that businesses are charged quite a bit when it comes to recycling. Take card and paper for example. When a person takes their waste paper to be recycled there is no charge, yet if you are a business and want to take it to your local recycling depot, you get charge! If the Government and Councils is wanting to promote businesses to be greener, don’t bloody charge them for doing so! Talk about dampening down enthusiasm, this sort of stuff does it brilliantly! Stop the charges and it might help businesses become a bit more proactive when it comes to recycling.

Bottom line is this: recycle more, throw away less, save potentially thousands of pounds a year on skips and landfill costs. It makes clear sense. We just need less barriers and no charges in the way to make this an easy process to take up.