Some people are born tidy, others have tidiness thrust upon them.

Humans, by and large, are pretty filthy creatures. Not only do they produce a vast amount of waste, they’re just not that willing to clean up after themselves. If there’s one thing that illustrates this it is their propensity for sweeping things under the carpet.

The only problem is our dwindling supply of carpet… there are only so many golf courses we can make, or need, from landfill, only so many mountains we can cram with radioactive nasties.

So as I see it, we have a few options…

We could stop making a mess – ideal, but also rather unlikely, it’s a human characteristic… you can hunt some animals by their tracks, you can hunt humans by their fast food wrappers. No plan based on the idea that we will suddenly stop creating mountains of the stuff will ever work… it’s a bit like combating carbon emissions by stopping breathing.

We could make more carpet – this has already been put into use with entire islands being created from landfill… mostly this carpet is rather neat and manicured and caters to another peculiar human trait, golf. The downside, as with most things related with consumption, being gas.

We could send our rubbish to the sun – a terrible idea if you ask me, you always need something after you’ve decided to get rid of it, let’s no be so hasty.

Or, and it’s a long shot, we could just face up to the fact that we really need to get a grip of this recycling thing. That logo on packaging telling you that it’s made from recycled material shouldn’t be a badge of honor it should be a requirement… Councils shouldn’t pay lip service to green lobbyists by organising recycling schemes that still end with plastics being shipped overseas to be buried under someone else’s carpet…

..even better, re-use, cut out the whole recycling thing altogether…

I know that you already know that, indeed, everyone I speak to agrees that this seems like a plausible course of action, so why is it that in real terms very little is happening?

Someone somewhere must really like the idea of global house stilts.