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Blackburn Council: you can’t recycle hair, you have to put it in landfill instead

Haircut Over at the Blackburn Citizen, yet another depressing story about the overbearing health and safety state. 

A hairdresser called Jeff Stone has taken home the cut hair from his salon for 40 years, to use on his compost heap. The council has now said that this is against the law, because it is “trade waste”. He and other shop-keepers have been forced to pay the council £100 for trade waste sacks to be collected from his shop to comply with recycling guidelines, with the bags going into landfill rather than being used in the sensibly and environmentally useful disposal he has used for so long.

A Blackburn council spokesman said Mr Stone had been acting illegally because businesses had a legal duty to ensure their waste was not harming the environment:

“They cannot simply take it home, no matter what it is.”

Well, it's clearly not hurting the environment, but this is a Council determined not to let common sense get in the way. Moreover, listen to the sense of self-importance in that statement. Listen to the smug security of someone totally sure of his "right" to tell other people how to live, notwithstanding longstanding and entirely harmless precedent, notwithstanding quite how ridiculous the Council's demands. How did we let ourselves get into this kind of situation, in which people like this unnamed council spokesman not only think that their Council has this sort of power, whatever the (non)sense of the Council's position in a given situation, but in which said highhanded Council actually does have it?

In summary, in stopping this chap from taking the hair home and instead forcing him to pay to have it go into landfill, the council are forcing a change from something streamlined, free and useful to something bureaucratic, costly and useless. This is a typical jobsworthy absurdity, with the bureaucrats intruding where there's absolutely no need for them, and a typical bit of council revenue-raising via cod-environmentalism which actually harms the environment.

Whilst having to confess that I'm surprised that this works as compost, I think the council ought to leave this poor chap alone. It's not as if "trade waste" is a magic term with an absolute meaning. It's not spent nuclear fuel rods, it's hair, for the love of Pete…!

By Alex Deane

Hat-tip: RH

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Alex Deane Posted in Overbearing state
  • libertarian

    If I was him I’d sell it to myself for £1 bag as composting hair, then it isn’t trade waste anymore.
    play the barstewards at their own game.

  • Bugger (the Panda)

    Not a Nanny State, a Ninny State.

  • Kent

    “How did we let ourselves get into this kind of situation…”
    We got into this situation by not holding politicians to account. The politicians in turn failed to hold the bureaucracy at local and Whitehall level to account. The politicians were too busy at the trough claiming on their expenses properly to scrutinise legislation as it went through and the government encouraged them to keep on claiming their expenses to shut them up.

  • startledcod

    I think it would be a good idea if when tales like these arise (btw hair does make good compost) you should append the contact details of someone in the Local Authority to whom we should all write as well as a local press contact.
    Mass action can work, espcially when a big noise about the absurdity of the situationis made locally.
    Whaddaya reckon?

  • guy herbert

    Actually, Kent,
    We got into this particular position by politicians not holding bureaucracies to account. Local authority (spurious) recycling targets and waste-management powers come about by bureaucrat-invented EU directives gold-plated by more officials in Whitehall, introduced by ministers who have not done more than rubber-stamp departmental policy, and voted through by tightly whipped backbenchers who haven’t read the bills and instruments, let alone considered the implications. The only political input into the process is a bit of populist green posturing involving worthy discussion of the evils of fly-tipping and purported evils of landfill.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/alexdeane Alex Deane

    spot on, Startled Cod. Coming right up.

  • Stig of the dump.

    Libertarian, you can’t sell it as the Environment Agency took it all the way through to the european court to ensure once a substance is classified as waste it remains a waste. It has to be physically and materially changed to be no longer waste, exchange of financial consideration is no longer sufficient.
    It could be sold as a recyclate but this would require a waste transfer certificate and the person moving the material to register as a licensed waste carrier.
    How did we ever allow this madness to happen ?,,,, most people were not aware it was happening as it was promoted as legislation to protect the environment.

  • Lou Thorn

    I’ve just sent them an email about it, and they gave me a ticket!
    Ticket: EBF1A754B521D Re: Composting Hair
    can you compost virtual tickets?

  • http://homealonewithdad.wordpress.com Ziggy

    I reckon it’s time to ‘do a Gandhi’ and organise nationwide passive disobedience to many of these moronic stupidities.
    The whole government stranglehold over every small and detailed aspects of our lives can only be broken by actively destroying it – which requires mass disobedience as a form of non-violent revolution to destroy this poison wrecking our lives.
    Why not make an easy start with parking charges and parking tickets ?
    If everyone refused to pay for parking (like I do) and just collected endless silly tickets (which I do) and then refuse to pay them (which I have been doing for at least fifteen years) and just make sure bailiffs cannot access their houses or cars (like I do) the whole evil system of government sponsored theft would fall apart in days.
    The fact that I have done this for years just proves how easy it is !
    Try it for yourselves.