THOSE who care about what we are doing to our environment will agree with much of what M H Reynolds says.

That said, I would suggest that the problem of waste and recycling doesn't lie with the general public. It lies with local and national politicians.

In the story headlined "Rubbish pile fears" we were able to read about our local council's strategy. The kindest thing one can say is it's incompetent. What good are slim-your-bin campaigns, when the amount of rubbish being produced is increasing?

No one in "waste management" has, as far as I can see, ever advocated not creating waste in the first place. That simple omission explains why we are having to dispose of more and more rubbish.

Look in the average dustbin and what does it contain? It contains commerce's packaging. What does that tell us? It tells us that our councils are spending much of our money on disposing of commerce's packaging.

If we want a meaningful waste management strategy, that strategy should target the amount of commerce's packaging we are all forced to throw away.

What would happen to our country's waste management problems, if all the packaging supplied with everything we buy, was made returnable to the store we purchased the goods from?

Of course such a waste management strategy would result in the routine squawks of "what about our costs (profits)" but if we persisted in putting the responsibility where it should rest, packaging would quickly become economically recyclable.

Such a measure requires two qualities, vision and will. Sadly those are precisely the qualities that are absent from waste management.

N TAYLOR, Worcester.