Reports that the bottom has fallen out of the recycling market are unsettling, particularly when the cold weather makes the job of hauling out the green bin unpopular. But this shouldn't be an excuse not to bother. Take paper waste. Eco-aware citizens who diligently separate it may now have heard that their old newspapers and cereal boxes are rotting in warehouses, rejected by the usually buoyant foreign market.

The recycling firm Greencycle reports that it is storing two-and-a-half weeks worth of newspapers, magazines and food containers from homes. Before the crunch, we could rely on China to take over half of our nine million tonnes of scrap paper as the manufacturing giant needed it for packaging. These days China isn't producing as much of it because the West isn't buying as many of its products.

Rather than seeing this drop in demand as an excuse either to invest in new goods from China, it should be seen as an opportunity to increase demand for the manufacturing of products from recycled materials in our country. This is the moment to support businesses that are working with UK waste, such as Remarkable stationery (www.remarkable.co.uk and Nouvelle toilet paper (www.nouvellerecycling.co.uk . For more companies, visit www.recycledproducts.org.uk.

Government recycling experts at WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) accept that this is a tricky time for the industry, but are confident that things will look up. “Although market prices for recovered materials are fragile now, our view is that they are showing signs of stabilising,” says Marcus Gover, WRAP's director of market development.

He points out that “the growth of recycling in the UK over the last decade is a terrific success story, with almost 10m tonnes of waste recycled in the UK every year”. In other words, the industry may take a small step backwards, but don't write off the leaps forward it has already made.

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