I CALLED in to see a friend yesterday and being a good citizen I took the rubbish out of my car to drop into his dustbin. I hadn't got the lid off before his wife came darting out.

"What are you putting in there?" she demanded.

"Rubbish out of the car."

"What sort of rubbish?"

"An empty Coke can..."

"What!" I thought she was going to have a seizure. "Do not put that in my bin," she yelled.

"And a plastic water bottle."

"Plastic!" The crazed look on her face suggested it might be safer if I swallowed it. She had obviously taken recycling to heart and was determined I would not disrupt her system. My pal told me she spends hours sifting through their household waste to make sure nothing goes in the wrong receptacle.

I marvelled at her dedication but she is not alone; families all over the borough are sifting, sorting and screening their rubbish. Macclesfield Borough Council spend a fortune recycling it all. The whole operation is most impressive.

So imagine my surprise, when helping Mrs B unpack her shopping, to find bananas wrapped in a sealed plastic bag inside another plastic Tesco bag. No matter how stringent Tesco's packing specifications may be I doubt they are any match for the natural skin of a banana. Apples were similarly bagged, as were oranges. Where's the logic in double wrapping hermetically sealed fruit? It makes a mockery of my pal's wife spending her twilight years sifting household rubbish when the big supermarkets pump it out like Texas oil wells?

I had lunch in Asda last week and bought a newspaper and two boxes of matches on the way out. Can you believe they gave them to me in a polythene bag? Maybe they thought they were too heavy to carry without handles. When I opened the bag a paper receipt fell out. Asda must print out billions of these unwanted till receipts. WHY? It's not as though you can return a newspaper if you don't like the news.

Is there ANY point whatsoever in householders worrying themselves senseless about recycling when huge amounts of unnecessary packaging are produced simply to suit the distribution systems of large retailers?

Tesco generate an eighth of all retail sales in the UK and together with Asda, Morrisons, M&S and Sainsbury's they create enough unnecessary plastic, paper, aluminium and glass to sink a Caribbean Island. So let's not pussy-foot around. If we REALLY want to save the planet let's stop nibbling around the edges and tell the big supermarkets to tighten up their act. Instead of financing the cost of collecting and recycling their rubbish Macclesfield Borough Council should be fining the supermarkets for producing it.

  • THE views expressed on this page are those of Vic Barlow and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Express.