Euro Trash

Islington residents, we are told, are keen on recycling.

However, of the eight flats in our block, it seems that the inhabitants of only two are actually keen enough to practice it. We lead in this cause. The basement/ground floor residents run a close second.

However, to boost participation, indoctrination is well underway. They're getting to 'em young. Islington schools organise trips to the local recycling plant. Unfortunately, the kids only see the inside of a special 'education room'; no chance of actually getting to view the tin cans and plastic bottles being melted down and turned into something else. (What do they turn them into?)

So, a bit of a rubbish school trip, really.

What you can be sure of when you get there is that they won't be telling you about this.

"our Government is obliged to implement a waste policy imposed by the European Union, which dictates that by 2020 we must reduce the amount of waste we landfill to a third of its level in 1995. We are so far short of our EU targets that, as the National Audit Office reported last year, our local authorities will soon be incurring fines from Brussels of £200 million a year.

The idea is that we should increase our recycling of rubbish to 27 per cent (which in reality means shipping millions of tons of waste collected for "recycling" to other countries such as China). The only other way we can legally dispose of up to half our rubbish is by building these huge incinerators, which make very little economic or environmental sense, and which cause such distress to those living nearby."

Read it in full. And weep.