RECYCLING stuff we don’t want, wrongly called waste, saves energy and raw materials, and produces less CO2, so we should take it seriously. Paper, glass, plastic, aluminium and steel can all be used many times so it’s surprising that the recycling rates are still so low in England.

One reason is that collecting waste is the duty of local councils, all 376 of them. The result is too many variations on what can be collected and how, and we lack a national mindset or habit.

Perhaps we should take the best performance as the standard and make it the national norm, like the Welsh statutory targets, though we need to be careful of some of the figures. In my book recycling is individuals purposefully sorting out materials that can be used again, and collected regularly.

Some councils assume that if they are not burying the waste in landfill, then it’s being recycled by the thoughtful residents into different bins, and that’s not so. It may be incinerated or sorted by private waste firms, and they make all the extra money – like £700 for a tonne of aluminium cans.

If all households are to take proper responsibility for recycling, rather than leaving it to be sorted from the general waste, then it must be collected differently, and the key is how often general waste and recycling bins are emptied.

Thus Calderdale, in the top ten nationally, empties the recycling bins every week, with the general waste every other week, while in some councils it’s every three weeks. In many countries householders pay to have the unsorted waste removed – a real incentive to recycle.

Bradford still has it the wrong way round, with general rubbish collected weekly, and recycling fortnightly, though they may be trialling weekly recycling collections with general waste less often in the Wyke area.