Jane Powerson packaging waste
Just as you never meet people who say they're bad drivers, you never meet a soul who is a litterer.
Ponder this: according to Repak, 40 per cent of adults admit to leaving their recyclables on the ground at bring banks (generally stuffed into unlovely bags or soon-to-be-soggy boxes). Yet 83 per cent of the people who are dumping (sorry, leaving) their containers on the ground believe that littering at bring banks is a problem.
If my calculations are right, this means that a third of adults are up in arms about the shocking state of such facilities, but they fail to notice that they are contributing to the mess. There you are: that's the there's-nowt-stranger-than-folk fact for today.
During the months of November and December our increased consumption generates an extra 30 per cent - or 80,000 tonnes - of packaging waste.
That's the equivalent of 170 million used containers - 35.5 million glass bottles, 45 million plastic bottles, 83 million drinks cans and 6.5 million cardboard boxes - and four million rolls of wrapping paper.
Apparently, we're quite diligent about our glass bottles and jars, recycling 80 per cent, but we need to pull up our socks when it comes to other containers. At present we recycle only 45 per cent of beverage cans, 30 per cent of plastic bottles and a measly 15 per cent of our milk and juice cartons.
Other, less obvious items that can be recycled include sweet and biscuit tins, and aluminium trays from takeaways, mince pies and cakes.
They should be rinsed if necessary, scrunched up and popped in a can. Clean foil may also be recycled, but not the foil from your turkey (grease or other food contaminates the paper among your recyclables, and renders it useless).
Paper napkins and tissues should be composted. In fact, a third of all our domestic waste can go into the compost bin - although not cooked food or meat, fish or poultry products. These can be fed into a green cone, a wormery, a bokashi bucket or a "pig" - an insulated metal bin that "digests" scraps.