Regardless of how much or how little rubbish I throw away, I have to pay the district council a flat rate. This means there's no incentive to reduce packaging, and so there's no incentive to reduce the council's bill for disposal.

I've heard some say, 'Yes, we need to charge people according to how much they throw away'. This is crazy talk because:

• People will just dump their rubbish in laybys.
• It's not just a question of volume of rubbish, it's what's in there; and people don't have the time or expertise to differentiate levels of disposability.

My solution is to have a disposal tax on every product that will ultimately be thrown away. There would be a number of categories depending on how costly particular materials are to dispose of. For example a paper bag would be in a cheaper category than a plastic bag.

The tax would cover the entire rubbish collection budget, and so that element could be taken out of the council budget.

I've added this idea to the Political Manifesto.