At the risk of turning this into a site with a slightly peculiar focus on bin emptying policies, I have to take the equal risk of disagreeing with my Platform 10 comrade Fiona Melville, who wrote on the subject last week.
I understand Fiona’s point about local autonomy. However, we shouldn’t miss the fundamental point that incentivising better behaviour towards the environment is likely to have a far more positive effect than forcing people to act in a certain way. A simple understanding of social psychology would confirm that to be the case.
I wrote about this in a TRG pamphlet earlier this year and used an episode of the Royle Family as an example of the negative impact of enforced environmentalism. As part of Caroline Aherne’s always beautifully crafted working class comedy, a common thread was that of various characters complaining about having to pay 5p for a carrier bag for the sake of the ‘environment’.
It symbolised the resentment at the use of compulsion rather than persuasion and incentivisation. The top down approach of compulsion was symbolised by the bin tax or the policy of certain supermarkets of charging for carrier bags.
Instead of compulsion, policy makers and businesses should be focusing on persuasion and incentivisation. That is why the Tesco approach of awarding Green points and incentivising environmentally aware behaviour is far more effective than the Marks and Spencer/ bin tax approach of compulsion.
Incentivisation makes the citizen consider their actions and respond in a much more positive way than compulsion. Compulsion creates resentment and can have a negative impact on behaviour. That is why a shift from a bin tax approach was quite correct and is likely to be environmentally beneficial.
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In James Callaghan’s autobiography, Time and Chance, he says he learnt very early on in his Parliamentary career that “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”.