Following the recent report on the (partial) collapse of the waste recycling system in the UK, we have Jane Kennedy, the "Environment Minister" telling us that, "It is very important that we all continue to recycle what we can." Thus, she trills, "We really don't want recyclable materials to end up in landfill."

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"We don't want recyclable materials ending up in landfil", in true pantomime style..... Oooh yes we do!!

Now, it seems to me that if it's uneconomic to recycle something now (and it must be, or they'd be paying to get the waste) it may not always be so. So landfills of today may be the goldmines of tomorrow. And if we send them to China or the 3rd world, they'll have the goldmines and we'll still have holes in the ground. However, EU rules trump all. As soon as something becomes 'waste' it is subject to all the tyrannical practices of the Euvil regime. So, my plan is that it shall never be categorised as waste. It will be, say, 'heritage mix' (other suggestions welcome) and will be held for the benefit of future generations in specially-allocated storage facilities. If they look like holes in the ground, that is merely a coincidence.

I keep saying, the basic mistake was to call it "landfill" in the first place. It should have been called "land recycling", which it often is. Just up the road from us, we have an old corporation tip, which filled in a shallow, unusable quarry. After many years, it is now a development site for a new industrial estate. So what are they going to do with all the holes now?

The Japanese got around the ban on whale-hunting by calling it 'scientific research'. If someone will give me a bloody great hole, I'll dream up no end of projects requiring recent waste, 1-5 yrs degradation and 15 + yrs degradation.
The British, left to themselves, would have all sorts of fun finding ways round this, unfortunately our officials have lost their souls but gained an index-linked pension.

I worked for a large brewery years ago. We re-used (WHAT??) bottles and wooden cases over 30/40 trips. Let Sainsbury's Tesco and the rest of the wasters, RE-USE not recycle glass bottles and the cases. OOPS - no more cardboard to collect; no more skips behind the shop; no landfill; no diesel useage; arrrrrrrrr. no more tax for Brown to squander or throw at the EU. GREEN PAH!

There was a saying in Poland (attributed to S. Kisielewski) that "communism is a system heroically overcoming problems unknown in any other system". Seems worth recycling (the saying, not the system).

Far too difficult for supermarkets to administer ... and what the supermarkets say, goes. Easier to put a bottle bank in the car park and tell everyone how green you are - forgetting to tell your punters that the stuff is on the next slow boat to China.

Which it no longer is, it's going round the corner into rat farms errrrr storage, in the hope that one day the mkt will recover. Which it won't for yrs, because the longer this lasts, the more that will pile up and ensure prices stay near zero, for decades, that's how mkts work, but that is an alien concept to these fools.

This one isn't even a railway engineer.
Jane Kennedy.
"She was born in Whitehaven, Cumbria. She went to Haughton Comprehensive School (now called Haughton Community School) on Rockwell Avenue in Haughton Le Skerne, then Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington. She trained as a social worker at the University of Liverpool. She worked in social care for Liverpool City Council from 1979 to 1988 when she became a trade union organiser for the National Union of Public Employees. In this post she was prominent in the campaign to drive members of the Militant tendency out of the labour movement."

Dear God! And that is telling us what we should do with out rubbish?

Tractor production? Well, I am certainly not surprised. NuLabour keeps on referring to imaginary "Five Year Plans"; so this is simply par for the course...

Peter:

If Jane Kennedy worked in Liverpool, she would certainly know about the riverside walk and parkland adjacent to the River Mersey called 'Otterspool Promenade'. This development is a classic application of "land recycling". It's a very popular leisure attraction with locals. According to Wikipedia, the Prom was opened in 1950 and was built by landscaping a site that had been used for the disposal of household waste and rubble from the Queensway [Mersey] Tunnel. Looking at it another way, building the Prom created a dirty great big long hole under the River Mersey. I've just had a brilliant idea; I get them from time to time, you know. Why don't the refuse department of Liverpool Council take the City's rubbish and stuff it all back into the Mersey Tunnel? They say that nature abhors a vacuum. Well, in my opinion, that big long hole under the River Mersey - a kind of rubbish vacuum - is just crying out to be filled up again with Liverpool's rubbish. Great idea, don't you think? Hey, Peter, I've just had yet another great idea!!! Why not fill up the Channel Tunnel with ALL of the UK's rubbish? I must say, my brain is just sizzling with great ideas, today.

"Dear God! And that is telling us what we should do with out rubbish?"

Yep! Government is heaving with it. Tumbrels now?

That's better than anything the tories have come up with.
It must be, I can't remember any tory policies