I saw an interesting piece on tv the other night about new arrangements in some councils for waste collection, in response to stricter European Union regulations about how much of its total waste the UK should recycle. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, this country recycles only 18% of its waste, compared to Ireland 31%, Germany 58% and Holland 65%. http://www.ippr.org.uk/pressreleases/?id=2283 Local councils are saying they will have to charge for waste removal if they are going to avoid being fined by the EU http://www.lga.gov.uk/PressRelease.asp?id=-A783C9F1 Some councils are starting to take radical action, (e.g. collecting the rubbish once every 2 weeks instead of every week), but that is making people verrry mad, because they're starting to get rats, maggots and the stink of rotting rubbish. To be fair, the councils are under a lot of pressure to reduce the amount of waste they dump and they are collecting recycled waste every other week. In Ireland people are charged by weight for their rubbish and their record is much better, but there's a lot more fly tipping. The report said there's an estimated 9 years worth of space left in UK landfill sites.
Searching for "landfill" at the BBC site I found this wierd story about a fire that was burning underneath a landfill. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/guernsey/4851028.stm
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