Council snoopers sifting through rubbish bins to find out if you're wealthy or poor

[TriWooOx]

Quote:Nearly 100 town halls ordered secret searches of their residents' rubbish bins last year.

The official aim was to find out who was throwing out what to help councils encourage recycling.

But some staff examining the contents of bins also classified residents as well-off or poor.


In one area householders were divided into categories on the basis of their rubbish, ranging from Level One Wealthy Achiever to Level Five Hard Pressed.

The bin trawls, uncovered through Freedom of Information requests, have been criticised as an invasion of privacy and a waste of effort.

One council chief said he strongly objected to the examination of waste unless specific permission is obtained from the householder.

Jeremy Kite, Tory leader of Dartford in Kent, said: 'I do not believe it is right.'

Neighbouring councils to Dartford were among those who did go ahead with secret searches of bins.

Eleven councils in Kent allowed the bins from more than 2,000 homes to be scrutinised by officials working for the Kent Waste Partnership.

Waste was dumped into a big pile and sorted into 66 different categories, which included ten types of paper and card, 11 types of plastic, five sorts of glass, six kinds of textiles and a miscellaneous category that included disposable nappies, carpet and sanitary waste.

Other surveys were carried out in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and in the areas covered by Eastbourne, Hastings, Lewes, Rother and Wealden councils in East Sussex.

The officially-endorsed searches of residents' rubbish follow many previous rows over council waste collections.

The replacement of weekly bin rounds with fortnightly collections led to a backlash from voters in local elections.

There is also deep unhappiness about the introduction of 'bin police' empowered to hand out fines to those who fail to close wheelie bin lids or put out waste at the wrong time.

The use of wheelie bins themselves has now come into question - with pressure to give householders the right to choose bins or sacks - following the Daily Mail's Not in My Front Yard campaign.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...althy-poor.html

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often people write such things off as ridiculous but they are failing to see the horrific level of management and regulation that the experts are intent on governing their lives with *shrugs* imo