Council snoopers target bins for clues to race and wealth

[TriWooOx]

Quote:At least 90 local authorities have employed social profiling techniques to match types of rubbish to different ethnic groups and levels of income.

Officials and private contractors are tasked with examining the contents of families’ bins, checking supermarket labels, waste food and discarded mail.

The exercise is part of a recycling initiative so councils can target households in different social categories with leafleting campaigns.

However, critics have condemned the scheme as “highly intrusive” and a waste of money at a time when local authorities are being asked to cut spending.

Details of the audits were disclosed to the Daily Mail following a request under Freedom of Information laws, and revealed that more than 10,000 families were targeted last year.

Government guidance for the scheme suggested that all checks on bins should be done without the knowledge of the householders.

“Ideally, you do not want to inform the public of an audit taking place, as this could alter their disposal behaviour,” it said.

In many of the projects, officials deliberately chose neighbourhoods occupied by varied social and ethnic groups to see how they differed in the amount of rubbish they discarded.

Leeds, Poole, Kensington and Chelsea, Swindon and Cheshire East councils all used some form of social profiling in their bin searches.

In Hackney, East London, researchers picked homes based on their potential ethnic and social mix, collecting data separately on four different groups, including “multi-ethnic private flats” and “prosperous young professionals’ flats”

The report concluded that “as expected”, “educated urbanites” living in “trendy” flats threw away the least rubbish.

A scheme in Wokingham, Berks, found that almost a ton of rubbish could have been recycled, which was found in the bins of a 500-strong target group.

Another study in Bracknell Forest, Berks, discovered that more than half of all waste food in the bins it examined could have been recycled or composted.

Fiona McEvoy, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Councils shouldn’t be paying contractors to rummage through resident’s bins when there’s huge pressure on their finances.

“Local authorities should abandon their fascination with what’s inside our bins once and for all and concentrate on cutting the considerable fat within town halls.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/busines...ealth.html

[kevlar]

what a load of rubbish.