One of the many environmental benefits of being in the European Union is the Landfill Tax – a payment made on every tonne of waste tipped into a hole in the ground.

The aim was to reduce this primitive method of disposing of unwanted materials, with all the associated problems of water contamination, smell, air pollution, and methane leaking to the atmosphere. A 19th century response to waste disposal is not appropriate for the 21st century.

The UK was tardy in getting started, but our behaviour is being conditioned by the cost to our pockets, and as it will be £80 per tonne from next Easter, the amount of domestic waste now going to landfill is dropping sharply. Part of the thinking is to do with the realisation that much of the so-called waste still has a lot to offer, including the re-use of paper, card, plastics, metals and green waste. Additionally, in many cases, various forms of heat treatment can produce energy, either for district heating or for electricity generation.

Bradford’s first effort to increase recycling was to improve the household waste sites and then arrange a monthly collection of mingled materials, glass with cans, irrespective of colour or metal, and paper with card.

This has never been really successful because most of us forgot to put the recycling bins out – a month is too long a gap.

The ideal practice, in use elsewhere, involves sorting at the kerb side, with collection of recycling one week and rubbish the next, but Bradford doesn’t have the money to do this. The compromise is a system that will work, though it’s still not ideal.

Government money, to ensure that we have a weekly mixed rubbish collection, has allowed a better system to be rolled out – recycling bins collected fortnightly, with plastic bottles mixed in with the cans, foil and glass, all forms of cardboard in with the paper, and general rubbish collected weekly.

This should improve the recycling rate if we all put the bins out, but just in case the Council is taking a short cut and giving all the rest of the waste it collects, the unsorted stuff, to a local waste firm that will separate the metals, coloured glass and paper, and reap the rewards. These tonnages will be included in Bradford’s recycling percentages.

It’s just a pity that a recycling figure close to 70 per cent will only happen because a private firm is sorting through our rubbish on our behalf rather than us doing it properly ourselves.

However, my first fortnightly recycling collection is due, and I do hope it will soon be followed by separate collections of food waste every week.