Thoughts on the EU and recycling

Three local governments (councils) in the United Kingdom are trying to encourage recycling.^[1] To do this, they want to install RFID chips in the trash cans, and have the trucks calculate how much trash is in each can.  Residents can thus be charged by volume.  As the recycling bins would be exempt from this, residents would presumably start recylcing more.

There are several noteworthy things about this.   First and foremost, it ignores basic human nature:  the system is very easy to cheat.   How hard is it to take a bag or two of trash and put it in your neighbor's can late one night or early one morning?  Would this be common? Probably not, there are social pressures to resist such attempts, as well as simple laziness.  It would, however, certainly happen.  At what rate I do not know, and it might not be at a significant enough rate to make such a plan unworkable or undesirable.

So much for the obvious level.  From the article, it appears that this is being done in response to pressure from the European Union, which is upset that the United Kingdom "has one of the worst recycling rates in Europe."^[2] The European Union is apparently going to impose fines on the United Kingdom if the situation does not improve. I see, more and more, the European Union acting as a government and not as a treaty organization. To my mind, the difference is that the latter is far less binding, potentially ignorable, while the government has the power to enforce its decisions.