Well, my group has been doing a project on how household waste is recycled in Brain. We were quite shocked to discover that only 9% of people here in the UK make an effort to recycle their household waste. This is a lower figure than in most other European countries, and need to increase dramatically in the next few years if the government is going to meet its recycling targets.

The agreed targets for the UK mean that by 2008 we mus reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 12.5%, compared with 1990. And recycling can help to achieve that goal, in two main ways: the production of recycled glass and paper uses much less energy than producing them from virgin materials, and also recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions from landfill sites and incineration plants.

As part of our project, we carried out a survey of people in the street, and the thing that came up over and over again is that people don’t think it’s easy enough to recycle their waste. One problem is that there aren’t enough “drop-off” sites, that is, the places where the public are supposed to take their waste.