The previous government proposed fitting electronic tags to bins to weigh them, and fine households that threw away too much rubbish.

Critics argued that households would try to get around the tax by fly-tipping or burning more rubbish.
'Expectations exceeded'

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is backing a recycling reward scheme pioneered by Windsor and Maidenhead council in Berkshire.

Households in the borough will be awarded points for the amount they recycle, which can be redeemed at shops, restaurants and leisure centres, or donated to schools.

How will they measure this amount? Sounds ripe for fraud to me.

All well and good, but I presume that exceptions would be made for larger households?

All well and good, but I presume that exceptions would be made for larger households?
Two adults don't generate nearly as much waste (recyclable or not) as a family of five do.

That said, we've been recycling as much as we could since ~1995 when a recycling centre opened up in a nearby town (prior to that it had mostly been just cans and paper at school). We would drive there once a month and recycle all the waste we could. We compost everything we can and now we've been given a "green bin" (bin for compostable waste) we also use that too.

At the end of two weeks our regular bin still isn't really full...

I wouldn't think so. If I were rolling out the system, I would give rewards based on the ratio of waste to recycling. That way everyone wins, what ever the size of their family.

Surely students aren't going to be eligible for these rewards though? We don't pay council tax!

I Agree - a % of total waste by weight would be best

the recycling business is BIG business and totally paid for and staffed by our efforts to recycle for them