Britain's rubbish rebellion

WHITEHAVEN, England —

The citizens of Whitehaven try, really they do. They separate out their cans, their paper, their cardboard and their glass, and they recycle them all.

They compost. They jump up and down on their trash to cram it into their government-issued garbage cans, and they put the trash out for collection at exactly 7 a.m., twice a month.

But when Gareth Corkhill, a bus driver, was fined $215 — and given a further $225 fine and a criminal record when he failed to pay — for leaving his garbage-can lid slightly ajar this spring, Whitehaven's residents banded together in dismay. They raised the money to pay the fine, and they began to complain.

"I consider the fine against Mr. Corkhill to be a matter of injustice, really, and as a Christian minister I'm required to speak out against injustice," said the Rev. John Bannister, the rector of Whitehaven, a seaside town in Cumbria.

Referring to the garbage cans Whitehaven residents use, he said, "To be given a criminal record for leaving your wheelie bin open by 3 inches has, I think, really gone beyond the bounds of responsible behavior."

Across Europe, residents are struggling to adjust to a new era of garbage rules. Britain, particularly, is in the midst of a trash crisis, with dwindling landfill space and one of Europe's poorest recycling records.

Backlash flares

Threatened with steep fines if they dump too much trash, local governments around the country are imposing strict regimens to force residents to produce less and recycle more.

Many local governments collect trash every other week, instead of every week. They restrict households to a limited amount of garbage and refuse to pick up more. They require that garbage be put out only at strict times, reject whole boxes of recyclables that contain the odd nonrecyclable item and employ enforcement officers who issue warnings and impose fines for failure to comply.

Few people could dispute that in this era of dwindling environmental resources, it is essential that garbage-heavy societies such as Britain change their profligate ways. "These are challenging times, and [Britain] is behind the game when it comes to relying on landfills," said Beverley Parr, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Or, as Ian Curwen, a spokesman for Copeland Borough Council, which encompasses Whitehaven, said: "Ultimately as a country, we have to do more. We can't just keep producing and throwing things away."

But Britons do not like being told what to do. Encouraged by anti-government newspapers, they particularly resent government meddling, as they see it, in such intimate matters as the contents of their garbage cans.

As regulations become more stringent and enforcement more robust, there have been reports across the country of incensed residents shouting and throwing trash at garbage collectors, illegally dumping and burning excess garbage, and surreptitiously tossing trash in — or stealing — neighbors' garbage cans.

"It's like something out of 'Mad Max,' " Paul Nicholls, a resident of Cannock, near Birmingham, told The Guardian newspaper recently, describing the free-for-all in his town at garbage-collection time. "Every man for himself, scavenging for an extra bin."

Reason for the rules

Government officials said the new regulations are necessary if Britain is to adjust to the changing times. Along with the rest of Europe, Britain has been ordered to reduce the waste it puts in landfills — by 2015, to 50 percent of what it was in 1995 — or face untold millions of dollars in European Union fines.

That means people have to completely rethink their relationship to their refuse, said Paul Bettison, chairman of the environment board of the Local Government Association.

"It's a sad thing to have to shatter people's illusions, but gone are the days when we could put all our rubbish and junk in a big bag and overnight the fairy would come and take it away, and that would be the end of it," Bettison said. "The rubbish fairy is dead."

The twice-a-month collection regimen, in use in more than half the country, is particularly unpopular and became an issue in recent local elections, in which the ruling Labour Party was trounced by its opponents.

Among other things, said Doretta Cocks, who runs the 22,000-member Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, having infrequent collections creates a health hazard, what with the smell, the maggots and the rats.

"It's supposed to be environmentally friendly, but it's not," Cocks said. "How can it be environmentally friendly to have two weeks' worth of rubbish in your house?"

Whitehaven provides many of its homeowners with an array of recycling bins and government-regulation wheelie bins that are often modest in size, to say the least, holding perhaps four black garbage bags. Into these they are expected to stuff two weeks' worth of garbage.

"My bin's always full," said a 62-year-old Whitehaven resident, who said he can force five bags in if he jumps on them vigorously enough.

He is engaged in a running battle with the garbage collectors. Once, he put an extra bag of trash on top of his bin; the collectors refused to pick it up and left the garbage from the now-ripped bag sprawled on the street. Once, when he failed to close his lid properly, he received a "nasty note saying it was overloaded," he said.

The note was followed by a sticker of shame affixed to the bin announcing that he was violating local garbage laws. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is afraid of running afoul of the authorities, said he now regularly takes his extra trash out to an empty field and burns it.

Next: microchipped bins?

Britain is poised to experiment with programs under which households would pay according to how much garbage they throw out, just as they pay for the quantity of water or electricity used.

Under one scenario, people's bins would be fitted with microchips, enabling local councils to record the weight or volume of garbage per household. Although such bins are used in other European countries, even the prospect has critics in Britain muttering about Big Brother and creeping taxation.

In Whitehaven, the residents are annoyed enough about the rules they already have.

Claire Corkhill, whose husband received the fine for their open bin, still is recovering from the indignity of having two uniformed garbage-enforcement officers, or "garbage police," as they are known locally, show up at her house.

"They were wearing stab vests," she said, referring to a type of body armor. "My sister is a police officer, so we thought it was a joke, to be honest."

Curwen, the local council spokesman, said the Corkhills had failed to respond to several warnings. "They got a sticker, and then a letter, and then another letter saying, 'Would you like us to come [around] and discuss your waste situation with you, because we need to reduce our land filling and the fines are quite steep,' " he said.

Curwen said that people in similar situations — unable to close their bins because of too much garbage — should telephone the council. "We can give you tips on recycling and reducing waste," he said.

Bettison, of the Local Government Association, said there would always be some people who needed extra prodding.

"To encourage people to do something, you start off by asking them 'Please,' " he said. "Then you say 'Pretty please.' But if they don't respond to carrots, you have to move a little more along the scale that has carrots on one end and sticks on the other. You have to make it a little more difficult for them not to recycle."