Next week is National Recycle Week and it’s helpful to stress why this is so important as very few cities in this country recycle more than a third of their household waste, with much useful material being buried in landfill sites.

WRAP – the not-for-profit organisation Waste & Resources Action Programme – has considered recycling practice worldwide and determined that if we are going to use raw materials, then the best option for them after use is recycling in almost all instances, and there are a number of reasons why.

By re-using materials we safeguard natural resources that will now last longer and, generally, it takes less energy to re-use paper and re-melt metals than to start from the beginning with virgin raw materials.

Because recycling uses less energy, less CO2 is produced, so there is a smaller contribution to climate change and nearly all forms of recycling use less water than starting afresh.

It is now well recognised that we must keep waste out of landfill sites to prevent the production of climate-changing methane and the current landfill tax of £48 per tonne. When added to the gate price and transport cost, this is a good incentive to find another destination for the waste, and that is recycling, and preferably in the UK.

However, it’s still economical and environmentally sound to export our recycled materials to China. Up to five million tonnes of paper and half a million of plastic a year go to China. They fill up the empty returning containers and, overall, the CO2 produced is only one third of that from land-filling, incinerating the material or using new raw materials.

Recycled materials, sorted and not contaminated, have real value. A tonne of aluminium cans is worth £850, £150 for steel cans, £30 for separated coloured glass, and high-density polyethylene (milk containers) produces £320 per tonne. Newspapers and magazines are worth more than £100 a tonne. But in all cases, the price is very much lower if materials are mixed.

However, to get up to 70 per cent of the waste recycled, we need an alternate weekly household waste collection system. It should be recycling one week, then the rubbish the next, with the recycling sorted at the kerbside and all green waste and food waste collected on a weekly basis and sent for anaerobic digestion to produce methane that will generate electricity for local use.

Because more than half of us can’t be bothered to recycle, then it needs a mandatory system where the recycling material is collected free, but the rubbish is weighed and paid for. The council tax would be reduced and the shortfall made up by selling the extra recycled material.