'Chip and Bin' dumped by council

The UK's first project to measure the amount of rubbish thrown away using microchipped bins has been dumped.

But the government has said the failure of the scheme in South Norfolk does not threaten the future of similar projects elsewhere in the country.

South Norfolk walked away from the scheme, started in Autumn 2002, citing "unreliable" and "inconsistent" data.

The system worked by using chips to weigh rubbish as it was lifted into one of the 12 lorries fitted with an onboard computer.

An antennae in the chip sent the information about the amount of rubbish to the lorry's computer.

Problems emerged in 2006 when the system, designed for 60 to 80 bin lifts per day, was handling thousands of such pickups every day.

Difficulties with the system meant binmen were repeatedly forced to override the system to get the bin emptied and finish the round.

In a statement the council explained why it had now given up, despite sticking with the problematic system until it was switched off in September last year.

It said: "We had received a substantial grant, and believed we had a responsibility to stick with it. That cost staff hundreds of hours of time in contact with the software firm, the weighing system supplier and the bin supplier, through meetings, email and phone calls."

But the council said that in the end the system "wasn't robust enough to cope", adding "when your first priority is to serve people by emptying their bins, you override the system, forget about losing the data, and get on with the job".

A spokeswoman for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that it was South Norfolk's decision to adopt the microchip approach and that no decision would be made nationally on the effectiveness of such technology until next year.

She said: "Pilot schemes to create incentives for recycling will be undertaken by five local authorities next year, when current legislation is updated to make this possible.

"Councils wishing to participate will propose schemes and methods that they have devised, not us. We will evaluate the impact of those pilots before making a final decision on whether other local authorities can introduce similar schemes."