Recycled soapbox

In my final year at University, I rented a room in a house owned by a couple, one of whom worked as a manager at a care home and one who worked as a park ranger. Jan, the ranger, was also an artist specialising in 'folk art', and while I lived with them had her work exhibited at the local library. The house was stuffed to bursting point with Jan's various creations, most of which either by accident or design, reminded me of Native American imagery. Dave, on the other hand was a complete contradiction to Jan - a Lou Reed fan, very political, and often to be heard rubbishing Jan's attempts at producing art from natural sources.

That year was a great one, and that house was exactly what I needed in order to completely focus my energies on successfully passing my degree. Living with non-students meant that I could sidestep the distractions of being in close proximity to other students, and they were the sort of people who just let me be - I didn't intrude on their life and they didn't intrude on mine. For an individual hardly renowned for their gregariousness, it was perfect.

Jan and Dave were, despite being complete opposites, highly principled individuals. They would only ever eat organic meat - a choice that at the time was nowhere near as common or achievable as it is now - they used Ecover washing up liquid and they were ruthless with turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby. Compared to the lackadaisical attitude that breeds like mould in student accommodation, that household was a paragon of virtue, a shining beacon of conservation and consideration for our planet. One of the most strongly-held principles Jan and Dave held was over recycling, and it is chiefly from them that I have become so committed to this.

Our collective wastefulness appals me. It appals me to the point that instead of fruitlessly moaning to anyone who would listen, I actually wrote to my MP. That sounds very grand, like I sat down in my study, opened the lefthand drawer, pulled out a sheaf of Smith-crested notepaper, unlocked the leather box where my fountain pen resides, and methodically put pen to paper; in actual fact I emailed him, but saying I emailed my MP doesn't quite sound so impressive.

I recall my German lessons at school wherein Herr Wydall, the most enthusiastic of all my teachers, educated us about Germany's firm approach to recycling, leaving me terribly impressed by their usage of different-coloured Mülltonne for the different types of waste, with black – the smallest bin – specifically designated for non-recylable waste. Germany have really stolen the march from the rest of Europe in terms of their hardline approach to recycling, and it still amazes me fifteen years on from this that we are not following their lead. Recycling schemes vary from council to council, and there is no mechanism to penalise those who elect not to recycle at all. In Germany, failure to recycle would probably see you handcuffed and forced to pick up litter in public places with your teeth.

How's this for irony – Milton Keynes, where I live, apparently has a very good recycling scheme. We have pink bags for recyclable waste, which sadly is not as comprehensive as it could be (you can't recycle all the different types of plastics that can now be recycled, for example), but it's much better than other places. We also get a blue box for glass jars and bottles. Sorting your rubbish takes no time at all, but there is nothing to stop you simply dumping everything into the black sacks and watch everything get needlessly poured into the landfill site. Yes, there are posters and leaflets occasionally encouraging Milton Keynes residents to recycle more, but a look out of my front window on refuse collection day reveals that middle-class Milton Keynes society is as apathethic as anywhere else when it comes to making the effort to recycle. The irony is that if you put something in your pink sack that can't be recycled, your rubbish will not be collected and you will receive a fine. But the lazy bastard who chucks everything into the black bag doesn't get penalised, thus we potentially punish those who make the effort and politely encourage those who don't to continue their environmentally-damaging actions. How very British.

A couple of years ago we spent some time at Brussels airport on the way back from Prague. In the departure lounge at Brussels airport there are different-coloured bins for cans, bottles, paper etc. Each is clearly labelled in many languages, including English, so even if you don't know which colour corresponds to which type of waste, reading the labels will certainly make it clear. I was dismayed at the way my fellow British travellers ignored the labels and threw rubbish into any of the receptacles. It's sheer bloody ignorance that only reinforces how we are perceived by our neighbours. I can only imagine how poor the English supporters travelling to Germany for this year's World Cup were at dividing and separating their waste.

I work for a large FTSE company with a very clearly defined and promoted environmental policy. At corporate sites there are large posters and signs encouraging colleagues to recycle their cans, plastic cups, paper and newspapers. I work in a subsidiary of the parent, which somehow seems to have been able to follow a policy of ignoring everything the parent has done to promote basic environmentally-friendly behaviours. I asked for a bin like those in other corporate sites in which to place used plastic cups; I was told it was too expensive, yet we were quite comfortable to sponsor an awards ceremony where we didn't even get nominated. To my dismay, I found out only a few days ago that the bins in the office for recycling paper just get mixed in with the non-recyclable waste, again because this is too expensive.

When my MP emailed me back, he did the usual MP thing of saying thanks for bringing it to his attention, that recycling was at the very heart of his beliefs yada yada yada. He said that the council were going to get more ruthless, but we're two years on from that and nothing's changed round our way. He also said that they were going to do more work with schools to influence parents via their kids. Intuitively this makes a great deal of sense to me. When there was a big campaign to switch to aerosols without CFCs back in the late 1980s, we spent ages talking about this in class and we in turn made our parents more aware of it. However, given the things that are getting dropped from school curriculums, it is hard to see how they will inject social responsibility into the lessons effectively.

I have considered becoming more active and vocal about this whole issue, considered joining Greenpeace; I considered writing to large companies such as McDonalds's or the large hotel chains to find out what their recycling policies are. I find it hard to believe that there are no policies at such companies where thousands of tonnes of potentially recyclable material is simply thrown away into landfills by companies each year. If I think about it too much it dismays me, and I can't help but think about what kind of world is going to be left for our daughter when she is approaching thirty. The government announces great initiatives to clean up companies and save resources, but they have yet to do anything about individual apathy, and like so many of their boneheaded policies have actually allowed us to make a choice over whether we participate in saving our planet or not. The latest TV adverts, voiced by Eddie Izzard and others, show how quickly a newspaper put out for recycling could be back on your breakfast table as another newspaper, the various things that can be created from a used tin can etc; on my way in to work I saw a refuse collection lorry that proudly carried the message on its side that recycling one bottle will conserve the equivalent energy of powering a computer for 25 minutes. That's just science, the kind of interesting but pointless information that makes people do diddly squat. Where's the message of duty and responsibility? The figures on how overcrowded our landfills are? If this is the government's PR campaign for individual responsibility then it has once again been dumbed down into irrelevance.

Tesco are not by any measure my favourite company. However, their packaging is consistently informative about what it is made of and how it can be recycled. For a company with such an arguably important role in terms of direct interaction with the consumer, this is the kind of smart move which might just see it sidestep the kind of criticisms levied at other large organisations such as McDonald’s. However, what becomes evident after seeing Tesco packaging that says ‘Recyclable where facilities exist’, is just how few of these facilities actually exist. Take their bread packaging, manufactured by Amcor. In order to recycle this plastic derivative, you have to collect together several tonnes of this very light material, bundle it all up and send it direct to Amcor. In Australia. Boots, that bastion of British high street charm, advises on its plastic bags that these can be recycled, and to throw these in with your usual plastics. I can't speak for every local scheme, but our supposedly advanced scheme in Milton Keynes will fine you if you chuck a carrier bag or two in with the tin cans.

I considered a local campaign of imploring with my neighbours to recycle more, and in some cases to just recycle full stop. I suspect it will be fruitless. Jan and Dave, seasoned recyclers for many years, were just doing their bit, and I think that's all you can do. As long as we continue to put out more waste in the pink sacks than black, compost all our kitchen waste and use proper nappies instead of disposables then I know we’ll have made a difference. More importantly, if I can instil in our daughter a spirit of wanting to do what she can to help the environment then I will have succeeded. But if I think about it too much I’ll still come round to the view that if everyone ‘did their bit’, this world would be a whole lot healthier than it is now.