Maybe I am being presumptious but I think recycling is sorted. Its future is already guaranteed apart from what to do with all those nappies, tyres and polystyrene. In India some people have a pig in the garden that sorts out the sewage and then it is eaten when big. Now that really is recycling.

What I mean is that most people talk about recycling positively. There is not an anti-recycling party that insists we send all our waste to landfill. The good news is that most people have a fair idea of what can be recycled and in response to this, some manufacturers now plan for ways to recycle their own products once they reach the end of their lives. The obstacles to effective recycling seem to be the management of waste and maybe even its definition and the contribution that policy makers give to set the rules for international standards.

All those bodies responsible for the treatment of our waste must publicise recycling. They need to tell us where to go, what recyclable materials are taken and when, and if collections are made.

There are a few new technologies to help with recycling such as using seaweed to speed up the conversion of human waste to potting compost would you believe, but mostly the improvements will come from working with the end user, the public. The best practice is that everyone recycles and that it is easy to do and that its collection is worthwhile.

Making it worthwhile means that collecting 500 green bottles from 20kms away does not actually consume more energy than that saved and herein lies the problem. Recycling is expensive. It costs to move things around and only when costs go down will we all be able to recycle. I believe that there will be so much spare electric power around from home and industrial generation and the efficiency of motors and batteries will be so vastly improved, that it will make sense to collect all sorts of recyclable goods. More things will be collected for recycling and more things are being designed to be recycled.

New things appear daily. Recently, the policy in Australia to ban plastic bags by 2009 is 90% complete as people have had to buy reusable woven calico bags as the only alternative. You would have to imagine though that the machine that does the weaving is not powered from a smoky diesel generator in Papua New Guinea.

Here in NZ we buy different coloured bin bags for various days of the week and these contain general waste. The green bags are collected on Thursday and the blue ones on Tuesday. The recyclable materials including all bottles and containers including tins, plastics and glass are taken by a fancy truck and on the same day paper products are collected. Everyone in the street seems to cooperate and it seems to work.

Half the waste goes to the tip and the other half is recycled. That's the sort of standard most countries should be achieving and somewhere I bet that is the minimum requirement.

Have a look at these links below or the Products section on Recycling Products, Centres and Companies.

www.recyclingglass.co.uk - aimed at the younger generation
www.plasticsresource.com - yep! plastics
www.recyclingconsortium.org.uk - what recycling is available and how
www.recyclingtoday.com - news from US
www.container-recycling.org - facts and figures