Now councils must try harder on recycling

WHAT a truly momentous week for the Mail’s campaign against plastic waste.

Following Theresa May’s announcement that she is launching a national crusade against plastic pollution, big supermarkets, food chains and soft drinks manufacturers have been lining up to help.

Tesco has taken up our call for a bottle deposit scheme... Iceland is removing plastic packaging from own-brand products... Waitrose is to stop using unrecyclable black trays for its ready meals... And Morrisons, McDonald’s, Wagamama – and yesterday Coca-Cola – promised measures to reduce usage and increase recycling.

After years of resistance, some of the biggest plastic polluters finally seem to be showing a social conscience.

But for all these encouraging moves, our poor record on recycling household waste remains a huge concern. Last year nearly half a million tons of rubbish, which had been carefully sorted by residents into special bins, was treated as ordinary waste and either incinerated or buried in landfill.

This represented 4 per cent of everything people expected to be reused – up from less than 2 per cent six years ago.

So while householders are doing all they can to support a recycling revolution, their efforts are being undermined. Councils claim that too much material is still being put in the wrong containers. But if this is true, they have only themselves to blame. If there is confusion, they must explain more clearly what should go in which bin.

The scourge of plastic pollution will be defeated only if everyone plays their part.

The Government has raised its game. So have big supermarkets, so have food and drink firms and so have ordinary families. Councils have a duty to do the same.