"Janet Baraclough" wrote
The message
from "George.com" contains these words:
snip
You may like to explain to me what is
so difficult about throwing rubbish in the appropriate bin.

Nothing at all..if householders believe that their council really
intends to keep it separate *and can afford to do so*. Rupert
mentioned three sacks colected in a month from a dirt track. I'm
sorry to say that it's an economic quantity for separate collection.
It's all too common where quantities are quite small, for the council
just to send out the one standard collection truck and tip all that
carefully sorted domestic waste back together for landfill :-(.. They
have been seen to fulfill their legal obligation for a politically
correct domestic-waste separation service.

I have seen this myself several times and so have many others.

Relative of mine has seen this happen in Norfolk too.

It's no surprise that householders won't bother to take care when they
know it's just a political game of lipservice to ecological principals
and European Directives, which councils simply can't afford to
implement.

There was a programme the other night (on one of the freeview channels
iirc) about waste disposal which more or less confirmed that. A reporter
had gone undercover with a company that was contracted to sort and deal
with recyclable waste and he secretly filmed huge quantities being
allowed to bypass the system. It wasn't being recycled at all, but in
fact just crushed/shredded and dumped in a privately owned landfill.

In another case there were sites where the owner was taking vast amounts
of cash, accepting all sorts of illegal waste that was simply being
openly burned, causing heavens knows what pollution, and it was more or
less being ignored by other authorities while the Environment Agency (or
whoever) took years and years taking a legal case through the courts.
Even when the site owner was eventually jailed for a short time the
illegal dumping and burning carried on! The law and local authorities
seemed either to turn a blind eye or are powerless to prevent it
happening. The buck is passed from national govt to local authorities
who simply do not have the power or resources to deal with the whole
problem properly. Meanwhile criminals are making a mountain of cash from
mountains of waste.

I'm all for recycling household rubbish but when people see all this
going on it's not much of an incentive to do their bit with the sorting
bins at home, let alone take the time to drag loads of other stuff off
to special centres etc.

--
Sue