Bill Glanvill. Two resoans occur; the first is that if soembody is going to be charged, I'd rather it was somebody other than me! Second, if we leave the unnecessary packaging at the supplier end, they may get the message and use less in the first place.

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

Peter, Hamburg. We used to have a deposit system on 'pop' bottles. It was stopped sometime in the 60's, probably because the costs of collection and cleaning etc were greater than the cost of providing new bottles. As most bottles of this sort are plastic, I can't see this system being reintroduced, although my local authority recycles these plastic bottles and plastic milk bottles.

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

Despite all the problems with recycling, which are all down to government shortsightedness anyway, could someone please explain what earthly use leaving the packaging at the shop is going to be? It still needs disposal whether they've got it or you have. I suppose it just means you arent responsible for doing it. Nothing to do with being green!

Bill Glanvill, Horsham, W Sussex

I live in germany and we take bottles (Beer, soft drinks, fruit juices) back to the supermarket where each bottle has a "pfand" (deposit) value. So for example if you buy a crate of beer you pay 15 euros and get 4 or 5 euros back when you take the bottles back. Many other countries have the same! What do people do there with bottles? Fight?!

Peter, Hamburg, Germany

Landfill... the whole of the EU should donate all their non-hazardous waste to the Netherlands, who should then compress it and combine it with stainless steel reinforced concrete, take down their country's entire infrastructure, raise the level of the entire nation by 50m minimum with the aforementioned mixture, then reassemble their nation atop it. I know it sounds an impossible amount of work, but if the alternative is there being no Netherlands in 50yrs time, then... what else is to be done?

Marco, bhm, uk

Welcome to 1970 what we saw in the UK our last visit was the sort of Recycling we had decades ago. We have a blue bag system at the curb with a large bin on Wheels for Organic Waste, we spend little time sorting and the number of landfills and costs of replacing them has more than off set the cost
of providing the collection system. The city also has a recovery of costs from the recycling and from the sale of Organic Compost for gardens. The care of the planet is worth our time.

John Ferguson, Halifax, Nova Scotia CANADA

If you add the time wasted to buy all the rubbish most of us buy (the stuff in the packaging as well as the package) the numbers go well beyond 16 minutes, probably several hours. Just consider the 16 minutes as your slight penalty for buying so much junk in the first place.

In our town recycling of every sort is picked up weekly, garbage every other week, including the summer; putting compostable materials in the garbage is not a pleasant alternative. There is also a refundable deposit on beer, wine and liquor bottles in the province.

We need to do a lot more, but it is a step in the right direction.

It is surprising that in a country as small as England that more isn't being done, or do you have some other means of dealing with garbage than to dump it in landfill sites?

greg panke, Orangeville, Canada

Actually I've pondered the water problem too. Thats a really valuable resource being wasted, and anyway it takes a considerably higher temperature ( 1350 Celcius plus apparently ) to melt a steel can than any residual food incinerates at.

I have noticed that most organic produce is overpackaged, bit of a dilema shopping there, save the planet or eat chemical free planet saving food?

In Scotland the soda bottles have a 20pence deposit on them, but still they turn up everywhere. I have seen lines of them at the recycling site, so we are too lazy to even hand those back. I do like the plastic bottle crushing machines in Germany, and I note that the same companies ( eg Coca Cola ) that sell us bottled drinks use recyclable PET bottles in other European countries. And the beer bottles all go back. I wonder if we are doomed to fail the recycling targets because we are being hobbled by those cunning foreigners in the EU?

What an interesting article.

David Bell, LARKHALL, UK

Barry from Wallington: Maybe because we have already paid for the "privilege" and are not going to pay twice for the same substandard service.

Frederick Davies, Oxford, UK

I'm probably being really thick, but why is it not possible to take the mixed garbage to a recycling centre and separate the metals, plastics, glass, paper, compostables, etc on site in an industrial way? Surely this option would be far more efficient and some skilled entrepreneur would probably make a fortune.

Steve Evans, Hong Kong,

James Silverton

Methan is much more damaging to the environment than CO2, which is why is South America they are going to great efforts to stop rotting foliage at the bottom of reserviours behind their dams from giving off so much of it, and instead try and convert it into energy.

Douglas Archibald, birmingham,

When visiting the Democratic Republic of Congo I commented that there was no squalor. The reply was, Squalor is a sign of affluence. They have nothing to throw away!

rbbwild, THIRSK, Yorks

There are three reasons to recycle:
1) There is a limited supply of the material in question. (We recycle gold)
2) Dumping the material would be toxic. (Lead batteries, motor oil)
3) The expense (energy cost) of deriving mew material from natural sources is much higher than recycling. (Aluminum)
There is a fourth reason, if you consider the land area used as garbage repositories. (NIMBY)

Glass is only questionably worth recycling since it comes from abundant resources, isn't harmful when disposed and has an energy cost for recycling that is approximately that of generating new glass. (Yes, you need to count the energy cost of the trucks - or your auto- when you bring it to a recycling center.)

So I argue that there be a mechanism for reasonable recycling. There is a cost for not recycling.

Bill Anderson, Hampden Sydney, Virginia, USA

In answer to James Silverton - CO2 is the prime greenhouse gas in that there is more *of* it causing a problem, because of burning fossil fuels, than there is of any other gas.

Methane, when released in large quantities, is actually a worse cause of the greenhouse effect than is carbon dioxide, so the process is a winning one. This fact is not so well-known precisely because the release of methane is on nothing like the same scale as the release of CO2, so it's not surprising for him to make this error.

Paul Heyes, Sheffield, United Kingdom

I don't mind doing my bit. What I do mind is being threatened with god knows what if I don't, to mainly dig out of a hole (pun intended) a bunch of pols who chose not to see this coming until now, or line the pockets of their quango and private contractor chums sorting it out (pun intended).

Looks like I'm not the only one.

The logical, fair way, is to reduce what goes into the system, facilitate the means to dispose of what cannot be so reduced (as opposed to fine first and figure out last), and incentivise rather the demonise to inspire public cooperation.

Peter Martin, Ross on Wye, UK

Say what you wish about this article but the writer is not the person who put a price on recycling, all governments and monetary bureaus do. Recycling is more about money and re-using resources than the planet and as for DomPD's comment on "recycling is apparently good for us all" I can't answer to such an argument! Let's all see how "the people" will feel in 100 years if they find out that recycling and "reducing their carbon footprint" was of no use whatsoever. Nothing has been proven about the ecological positives of recycling and reducing carbon emissions (with facts I mean not computer generated statistics based on a few peoples data).
Saying that I do support recycling as long as people are given incentives rather than penalties to do it. Or else let's just buy 10-15 massive incinerators to burn all waste so it's not waste anymore :P

Alex, manchester, UK

James SIlverton - Methane is also a greenhouse gas, so it seems quite a good idea to get some energy out of converting one molecule of one greenhouse gas into one molecule of another. It's effectively free energy with no added environmental impact.

Martin Evans, Newmarket, Suffolk

Tony from Brandon, Canada has hit the nail on the head - the problem IS recycling (which is a time and energy expensive, and nothing like as environmentally friendly as you might think, or like, it to be).

As much as I hate to hark back to the "good old days" (which weren't as good as we all think they were), some things certainly were done right:
- Fizzy drinks & milk all came in reusable glass containers, instead of "disposable" plastic ones. Bring back the 10p return your bottle! Easily the best form of drinks container recycling
- Many food products came wrapped in paper, which CAN be recycled easily and relatively efficiently. Unlike plastic. Even if paper/cardboard is landfilled - it composts easily, and relatively quickly.

The real enemy here is plastic - which is generally non-biodegradeable, is expensive to recycle.

Ade, Wallasey, Merseyside

Tim Worstall seems to confuse notional value with real value. My time is only worth £5/hr if someone will pay me that much. If I have to take time off paid work to sort rubbish, then there will be a real loss - the opportunity cost, representing what I might otherwise have earned.

However, if my time would otherwise be spent watching TV, there is a clear opportunity gain - 16 min/week free of Big Brother - which some of us would gladly sort rubbish all week to avoid.

It's only a waste of time if it takes you from something more important.

Michael Bruce, Selby, Yorkshire

I'm old enough to remember when paper bags were re -used and last night's chip bag -helped to light today's fire.
Cut down packaging and save at source

John, East Midlands, England

I pity the writer of this article.

If my life had lost direction to the extent that I felt it necessary to attach a monetary value to the amount of time I spent recycling, I would hang myself and hope that reincarnation offered me a second chance to live as my own man.

"Another way to put this is that...your time is worth nothing."

Yet another way to put it is that your time is your own.

Go to work and get paid, then get home and try and do what the hell you want. Recycling is apparently good for us all, so why not recycle when you can.

If you want to work out how much you would have been paid to take a shower if you had been at work at the time then great, just don't assume that we all suffer from such a desperate lack of self-worth.

DomPD, Leicester,

In Germany it's law that shops have to offer points - instore - where you can return excess packaging.

And as Ros and Ingo pointed out if you separate your waste when you are putting it in the bin it doesn't take any time. My kids do it for us, bring it all out of the kitchen into our wheelie bins (yes, 4 of them! we hardly have room in the garage for the car) and it gets collected.

Incidentally, bio waste and "other" waste are collected alternate weeks and there don't appear to be hordes of rats marauding around the countryside here. Of course, maybe that rat-recycler in Hameln has something to do with it.

My mum was a big complainer about her council requiring her to separate her waste until she was confronted by our bins and a quick explanation by the children one visit here. Now she's an enthusiastic convert (she also leaves packaging in shops in the UK)

Sheona, Erkelenz, Germany

So Tim Worstall says: "all modern landfills collect this greenhouse gas and use it to create energy."

CH4 + 3O2 = CO2 +2H20.

I always thought CO2 was the prime greenhouse gas and you get one molecule of it for every molecule of methane!

James Silverton, Potomac, USA

I will be really glad when another band wagon comes along

June Hart, Hockley, U.K. Essex

Can we expand this labour cost assessment to filling in overly complicated tax returns?

James, London, UK

Barry, Wallington. The reason so many signed the petition was that road pricing will not make clearer roads. People will still have to travel to and from work at the same time, road pricing is a way of increasing the cost of motoring, without the alternative of a decent public transport system. Also, many people object to having their movements tracked every minute of the day.

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

I'm very sorry that the extra 43 minutes a week (supposedly - I don't spend anything near that amount of time sorting my rubbish) is apparently so difficult for you all. However, the fact is that we ARE running out of landfill space. Maybe not immediately, maybe not soon, but there is no way we can keep producing as much waste as we do and burying it all. Surely it's better to start finding other ways of dealing with the problem before it becomes critical. Look at Naples just this past week.

Perhaps if the 6 minutes a day you are being asked to spend sorting your recyclables from your other waste is too much, maybe you would all consider reducing the amount of rubbish you produce in the first place. Use cloth nappies, buy fruit and veg unpackaged, and start a compost heap.

We need to reduce our landfill waste, or we will face a national catastrophe in the near future.

Sometimes our time does not have a monetary cost.

Hannah, Oxford, UK

In my garage I have several containers to put my recyclable rubbish, such as tin cans, bits of wood, cardboard packets etc. When I take these items to their respective containers, wha do I do? Well, I put the light on of course. Is it worth it?

Roy, Trowbridge, Wiltshire

Errrm, where does this magic number come from, that says I take 16 minutes to "sort" my rubbish? It doesn't take any time at all. Suppose I'm holding a bit of waste cardboard in my hand, then I throw it in the paper recycling box instead of the rubbish bin. It's not especially difficult. If it's taking 16 minutes a week for you to make these decisions then I'd suggest maybe your brain is running slowly and needs a bit of a tune up! A few days of the Times Crossword should give you just the mental exercise you need to get things running smoothly again.
Much ado about nothing!

Stuart, London,

Ros, apologies, but such recycling does indeed take a certain amount of time. How much time can be argued about, which is why I refer to the academic study on the point.
Paulina, my larger question is why is landfill not an option? When discussing what to do with rubbish we should add up all of the costs and all of the benefits, then make a decision. As above, in the calculations by the government so far, no notice has been taken of the major cost, that to our time. So the cost benefit analysis is flawed.
Malcolm, what you are describing is what economists call "opportunity cost" which is exactly why a price must be attatched to the labour we use to sort for recycling. Because there are so many other things that we could be doing with our time. Yes, watching TV, or talking to the children or supping a crafty pint. As the law now insists that we sort rubbish instead of doing these things, that has a cost to us. Which we must include in our calculations.

Tim Worstall, Messines, Portugal

Perhaps Worstall should think of this few minutes a week as contributing to his community. We all spend some time on cleaning and maintaining our homes - this is just planet maintenance as well as extracting useful raw material. It is crazy that we leave a legacy to future generations of dumped glass, plastic and metal that doesn't degrade in some cases for hundreds of years whilst consuming the worlds' raw materials at an unsustainable rate in the manufacture of these very same materials.

Jane, Sutton, UK

(Wasteful) recycling is not a "near-religious belief": it purports to be based on sound economics. It is just that one of the fundamental premisses of that economics is that corporations aim to maximise profits immediately, and then, presumably, go into early retirement as soon as the resources have run out. The reality is that, in a free market, prices are the best indicator we have of scarcity. Also, (wasteful) recycling, like all Socialist economics, is based on a static analysis of the problem: This is what we have now, therefore, if we consume any of it, we are obviously going to have less of it. (Duh!) It is clear how recycling - and population control - would appear attractive to such a mindset. There is no room in this system for the concept of (supply-side) economic growth facilitated by free human intelligence.

Kevin, London,

Waste disposal could be made much simpler if the smokeless zone regulations were adjusted, to permit the burning, in a domestic incinerator, of garden waste such as timber cuttings, of the kind that are too bulky to go into a compost bin. The relaxation of the regulation would naturally have to be carefully controlled, since there is a risk that builders and decorators would abuse the loop-hole in the law for burning waste materials on site. But if a relaxation of the law were carefully thought out and regulated, it would substantially reduce the garden waste going to council dumps. Smokeless zones were brought in to stop atmospheric pollution from coal fires. Garden incinerators, if properly regulated, would be harmless, and reduce the pressure on council dumps.

Edmund Burke, Kingston upon Thames, England

Yet another reason why the responsibility for recycling must be carried as much by the government as by consumers. Refundable deposits of 5p or 10p should be mandated for ALL bottles, plastic and glass, but ONLY the government can force measures like that. Once they've done it, though, the recycling just sot of happens by itself, and THAT is wonderful! It's all so obvious. Which must be why it isn't happening.

Tim, Winnipeg, Canada

Here's a citizen action anyone can perform, legally, and it might be rather fun (!!!)...

When you shop, leave all or most of the packaging behind after you have paid for your things.

If they complain, tell them you didn't pay for the packaging, it belongs to the store/distributor/manufacturer as a "sales promotion gimmick". Tell them you simply can't afford to carry it, or fit it in your car or bag. Point out that it costs MONEY to deal with this RUBBISH, and perhaps they should consider asking their suppliers to "supply" them with less rubbish in their shipping orders. COMPLAIN!

Ask them, politely, to point you to a rubbish bin, or to be kind enough to throw it one themselves. There is probably one right behind the cash register! The store workers have to be polite, and the customer is always right. So be QUITE insistent about it. Perhaps even be noisy about it, and others will follow your glorious example.

No need to get in trouble, it's all VERY reasonable.

Start with Wal Mart.

Tony, Brandon, Canada

Thank you: at least Tim Worstall is using his head,, unlike many of his detractors!

Mike Bibby, St Albans, England - not EU

If time is so valuable, why do all those people who "signed" the infamous Downing Street petition evidently prefer to waste time in traffic jams than pay under a road pricing scheme for clearer roads and a quicker journey?

Barry, Wallington, UK

43 minutes? Rubbish!! We call Sunday our recycling day now.

P Vincent, Manchester,

I agree with Ros. To believe that recycling inevitably wastes time is utter nonsens. Unless you do it in an unorganized way. But as Ros indicates it just needs a few baskets more.

btw German experience show that recycling even may create jobs as far as I understood - not to say about environmental protection.

Mr. Worstall: I suggest that you pay your wife that minimum wage for her work so that you duely can justify the billing of your presumed 16min per week. Or watch 16min less television a week.

Ingo, Frankfurt,

The point is we are rapidly running out of landfill sites and no amount of money will create more, so there isn't an option. Anyhow recycling takes me almost no time, even though I have to walk a mile to the "can bank" (garden waste, glass and newspapers are collected) because I just throw things into different containers at home and that takes a split second, whereas walking to the bank I always combine with going into town for something else anyhow.

Kathy Hall, Hitchin,

Spot on Tim.

Not only is our valuable time being wasted what we are dealing with is rubbish. It is not worth anything and is not worth recycling. If it was worth something we would not be throwing it away.

The concept of recycling is bogus, eco-facist nosense, designed to first make us feel guilty and them give us something to do to assuage that guilt and become involved in a spurious campaign to 'save the planet'.

We are spending more to recyclye than we gain - this is detrimental to the environment.

Chris Quin, Haslemere,

For those of us who live in really small houses, this issue is beginning to become a problem. I can just about accomodate a food bin, paper collection bag, and bottle container, plus an ordinary dustbin, outside my front door, but the collecting of plastic bottles defeats the system.
Also, cardboard boxes have to be transported to a collection site, which means taking them in my car.
This all takes time and money, and although I have plenty of the former, I am very short, as a pensioner, of the latter.
I wonder how people who live in flats manage, also people who work long hours, and finally, pensioners who cannot possibly afford a car?

E. Knight, Teddington, Middx

The only time in the past century the people of Britain have ever been governed well was between 1940 and 1945? However, national survival tends to focus the mind! Pre and post-Second World War, including the national disaster of the Great War, this country has had a poor standard of leadership in government, and this has led to an inexorable downward spiral of political, economic and military decline.

Mr Lachie Todd, Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.

Tim, judging by what you readers are saying, you've written a load of rubbish !

Dave, Knysna, South Africa

At last a journalist has cut to the chase. This is indeed the first question that should be asked. And, yes indeed Tim Worstall, i have also come to the conclusion that, as regards recycling, our time is worth nothing. The good news (here in France at any rate) is that many people are aware of this recycling farce, and even though you can recycle, people just throw all their rubbish into a black bag and bin it.
I would extend further this reasoning to speed limits. The imposition of ridiculous speed limits and the failure to build huge roads (not just big roads) as a way to transport people from A to B is also a way of telling us that our time is worth nothing.

Samuel Young, Paris, France

And of course, it’s not only time.

How much water is wasted in rinsing out empty milk containers? I must admit I’ve found myself on occasions cleaning tin cans with water from the hot tap, being more pleasant than cold, but the energy used must be many times that ‘saved’ from recycling.

Like most government policies, they’ve ‘found’ a problem, and then ‘found’ a solution which is far more harmful than the initial problem.

George Ball, Diss, Norfolk

Our dishwasher broke down many months ago and we haven't done anything about it. Instead, I wash up by hand, and I think I spend about the same amount of time, or less, doing that than I ever did stacking the machine, putting the required chemicals in, switching it on, impatiently waiting for it to finish so I could use some of the stuff in there, destacking it, checking which dishes were actually washed, restacking the ones which weren't, fiddling around trying to sort out the cutlery, trying to find space in which to relocate this 'clean' crockery (the draining board no longer being an 'intelligent' option) and getting thoroughly annoyed. Now, I sud up and get going while listening to Radio 4 and end up with a feeling of accomplishment, so I think Malcolm McLean has a point. And I think I save the economy about 5 hours a week at the minimum wage, or over £1,000 a year, if I award myself six weeks holiday, which I think I deserve.

David Short, London,

Worstall seems to conclude that everyone can carry on ' tipping the [non-recyclables] into the same holes in the ground that we’ve always used'.
Has it escaped his notice that holes which are filled up cease to be holes and the owner of any remaining holes will require a higher cost to fill them?

Chris, London, UK

If recycling is saving money why do we only have one collection of waste a fortnight once recycling is introduced?
Swindon has now introduced a new 'improved ' waste collection service where we now benefit from a fortnightly instead if weekly collection. We will now have unsightly great wheelie bins that have to be left in front of the house as they are too large to move out of sight. What is the monetary value of all this ugliness that recycling has introduced?

David Cage, Highworth, UK

This recycling lark makes me laugh, sadly in an ironic way. All the extra time and effort on the part of the public and the councils just so we avoid EU penalties that if we did nothing would have a net saving over these extra costs. And for what - landfill sites that will have extra concentrated toxins ready for our childrens children to buy houses built upon then.

Mike, Bristol,

"Recycling is based on the near-religious belief that everything has value, everything is worth saving, except your time."

After this false and insane premise how am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?

Malcontent, USA, USA

Sorting rubbish would be an appropriate way for 'Community Service' offenders to spend some time, being given a fixed amount to sort accurately, say one tonne. If the job is not done to the satisfaction of the overseer, then a second tonne is to be sorted, until one tonne is accurately sorted.

R. Lampard, Pordtbail, France

Recycling doesn't take much time at all. Just separate your leaf clippings, plastics, and papers. Here in California we have been doing it for years. We have different colored bins for each recycled item. I am happy to do it as it saves our natural resources.

Kim Righetti, Upland, Calif. USA

This is nonsense: if you have two or three bins for various types of rubbish it really does not take a moment longer to put something in the right one rather than the wrong one. With a little practice, even men can do it!

Ros, Germany,

Not sure what Tim Worstall is trying to say. If he means to say "let's all stop recycling", then I wonder what alternative he suggests. Surely he know landfill is not an option? Or has he found a magic way of waste avoidance? In which case I'd like to hear from him.
Also, how much time does his family spend on watching TV every week, and how does that compare with the 16 minutes he reckons the average family spends on recycling? And which activity is less of a waste of time? In short: less whining, more substance please.

Paulina Smid, London, UK

Actualy there seems to be a psychological need to spend a certain amount of time in housework. That's why automation doesn't actually reduce the time spent; it creates new demands and fashions. So if sorting the rubbish takes more time, other tasks will reduce to compensate.

Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK

It's just another government tax, like using businessmen as free tax collectors for VAT and PAYE etc.

Neil Murphy, cromer,