Its been an interesting few days for the very uninteresting topic of household waste. The Tories have announced plans to pay people in vouchers for recycling their waste and Ecotricity, a green electricity provider, has declared its intention to launch the UK’s first green gas tariff created, in part, from household waste.

The Tory scheme, announced today in a speech given by George Osborne, was pioneered in the US and has been piloted in some Tory run councils. The idea is to provide incentives for people to recycle through a points system that can then be renewed through popular high street retailers.

Ecotricity are one of the greenest suppliers of electricity in the country. They are looking to invest £50 million into two biodigestion units (green gas mills in the company’s words) and match British Gas on dual fuel pricing. The scheme will be introduced in January but initially it will run of ‘brown’ gas with the introduction of biogas coming in stages over 2010.

Waste is turned into biogas by microbes contained in tanks without oxygen that convert the matter to methane and carbon dioxide. This can be burnt to generate electricity or supplied over the national grid as gas. Recycling at its best.

Both plans provide novel ways of dealing with household waste, and considering that UK homes send roughly 22.6 million tonnes of rubbish to landfills a year, ones that are to be welcomed.

By Lawrence Buckley