Agreed with Jennifer Rice. I am more interested in curtailing my consumption than recycling things that are finally beyond use.

The simplest example is also a current consumer trend. If the demand for paper/plastic shopping bags is eliminated (call me quixotic, but it seems simple enough to me) because people are using long-lasting cloth bags made of sustainable material instead, then there doesn't have to be an energy and resource-munching industrial plant to recycle them.

Currently, the sky-high inefficiency of sorting recyclables means it's really not the answer. And recycling isn't necessarily an eco-friendly process, either. (Books printed on bleached recycled paper are more harmful than paper from sustainably harvested forests.)

Focus on the individuals described in the first paragraph - those who save the teabags - and put stock in reducing and reusing... not recycling.

Summer Robinson, Seattle, Washington, USA

I'll do my bit too .... but it is reliant on local government taking all the different sorts of recycled waste.

A recent piece on the BBC news praised local shops for being more environmentally friendly by using brown paper bags - my local council does not take brown paper for recycling so as far as I'm concerned it's just as bad (though would probably rot quicker in the local landfill site than plastic packaging).

Unfortunately what we need is joined up thinking where the recylcable packaging matches the local waste collection which is matched by the market in recycled waste.

And then, of course, the benefits will be wiped out by growth in China or other developing countries.

Unfortunately pessimists have got it right - but one has to keep on trying I think.

nick, Warwick,

If this "debate" on environment is as good as it gets, then we're surely doomed. Environmental issues are much more than recycling "stuff", they're about doing without stuff, unless you're prepared to pay to keep it for many years. Cheap Chinese is environmentally exorbitant, as David Aaronovitch points out. We don't have to buy it all. We mostly don't need it, it doesn't last, we throw it out, and no one else wants it then. Maybe a BMW is good value in those terms. If you can keep it running for twenty years, your kids can have it. Very little we are consuming today has such a future. And neither do we, unless we start counting the long term economic costs of being so environmentally profligate and irresponsible. Time is valuable, but most valuable when it is used to protect the future.

Jennifer Rice, Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA