During the election, the tory manifesto pledged to scrap Labour´s plans for new bin taxes on families.  However 4 weeks later, the new Environment Minister Caroline Spelman makes a U-turn and endorses the pay-as-you throw bin taxes.

Yesterday during her first speech as the Environment Minister, Mrs Spelman said: 'It will be up to the local authority to adopt a policy on recycling that works locally.'

She added: 'I think that people prefer to be rewarded for doing the right thing rather than penalised for doing the wrong thing. But if we believe in decentralisation, as we do, the consequence of that is that local authorities should be free to set their own regime.'

This goes hand in hand with a recent report, by Big BrotherWatch, claiming that the number of households whose rubbish is chipped has jumped by two-thirds to 2.6m.  Chipping bins is not aimed at spying on people´s lives but is aims at helping councils work with householders reduce the waste it sends to landfills, claims a source.

Do you think that this new tax will make a difference on the amount of waste people generate or do you believe it is yet another futil tax to generate additional revenues?