It was good to see your centre page spread on recycling (Echo 8.1.04); and you are quite right to suggest that we have to win over the hearts and minds of our fellow-citizens to take the subject really seriously. There is much we could be doing. There has recently been a successful household batteries recycling pilot project in Bristol and one is planned for Stroud. We would save ourselves from putting "heavy metals" like cadmium into land fill sites where these noxious chemicals leach out into our water supply. We also need to apply pressure on manufacturers to reduce the amount of packaging on products. But here too we have to deal with hearts and minds: would we still buy the goods if they were in plain wrappers rather than inside gaudy and seductive packets? Western Australia is aiming to achieve zero waste by 2020, and Canberra by 2010, and Massachusetts aims to reduce its municipal solid waste by 70% by 2010. Many businesses already have zero waste schemes in place, most notably Toyota, Xerox and Hewlett Packard. Britain has a long way to go to catch up, but that's just another way of saying Britain has huge opportunities waiting to be taken. But they must be taken quickly, because Tony Blair seems about to take the country off in completely the wrong direction with two-thirds of our waste being either dumped in the countryside or burned in health-threatening incinerators. A recent Green Party report concluded that the UK could create 50,000 jobs by 2020 in Green waste management in schemes like doorstep recycling, if we pursued a zero waste strategy. Isn’t it time we took this route?

Yours

John Heywood Cheltenham Green Party (Home address: 10 Kingsley Gardens, Cheltenham)