Recycling, why bother?

This is the kind of thing that really gets me.

The government keep telling us to throw away less and recycle more. That's fine. Despite my scepticism about man-made global warming, I happen to feel very strongly about recycling. The problem is, the dustmen won't take away our glass. They say that we have to take this to the bottle bank ourselves. So I went to the nearest recycling centre at my Tescos in Borehamwood, stood in a queue for ten minutes, and when it came to my turn, the recycling machine broke down. I finally found a bottle bank, several miles away in North Finchley. The round trip probably used up half a gallon of petrol and emitted several kilos of carbon into the atmosphere. Kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it?

It's another illustration of the government's lack of joined up thinking. It's all well and good to try and encourage people to recycle, but if you don't provide an infrastructure for recycling, people won't recycle. It's as simple as that.