Sir,

Can anyone explain to me why we have to put our recycling into purple and red bags when on collection day they are simply thrown in the back of the same lorry and crushed up together?

The reason I am suspicious is that back in 2007, as much as a quarter of material collected by householders for recycling was being buried in landfill sites, largely because councils had organised collection very well but had neglected to concentrate on the recycling bit that comes after.

In 2008 it was also discovered that a lot of recycling material was being shipped to China, where it was simply burnt as cheap fuel.

For a country that invented the train, the jet engine, metal ships, radar, the computer, the light bulb and a host of other ingenious things it is a sad sign of how far we have sunk that today we seem incapable of even processing our own junk properly.

Could MCC explain why paper, metal and plastic are separated by households but then mashed up together in the same lorry?

If there is some clever process of separating them out afterwards then why put us to the bother of filling different coloured bags?

Gareth Dunn

(Monmouth)