The Independent: "A lesson in packaging myths: Is shrink-wrap on a cucumber really mindless waste?"

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"It's easy to picture the 10 million tonnes of packaging we get through in Britain each year as a towering, dirty mountain of pollution and doom. Or, if it's more useful, imagine the equivalent weight of 35 jumbo jets a day or a quarter of the contents of your bins.

"However you do the maths, packaging is bad news for the planet, and as Christmas consumption reaches a peak, those mountains, planes and bins only look dirtier.

"But packaging is not necessarily evil, as veterans of the industry point out in a new book. In Why Shrink-wrap a Cucumber? The Complete Guide to Environmental Packaging, Stephen Aldridge and Laurel Miller unpack various myths to show how, done well, packaging can please the planet as much as it can producers, retailers and consumers."

Resource: "London authorities tender textile recycling banks"

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"Lewisham Council is leading a procurement process for a single-provider framework to ‘significantly and cost-effectively’ increase the amount of textiles collected for reuse and recycling at several London council bring sites.

The London initiative, led by Lewisham and including the boroughs of Hounslow, Ealing, Harrow, Barnet, Sutton and Camden, was set up in response to a recently published WRAP report, ‘Valuing our Clothes’, which found that textiles – most of which are recyclable – make up three per cent of household waste per year. The report also found that in the UK over 30 per cent of clothing is still being discarded at costly landfill sites.

"Councils resort to burning millions of tons of household rubbish as amount recycled by families stalls"

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"Millions of tons of household rubbish was burned instead of recycled by councils last year, new figures revealed yesterday.

"The amount sent to incinerators shot up by almost a quarter - while the amount sent for recycling went up by barely a single percentage point.

"The burning boom means millions of families who have been forced to cope with fortnightly collections, rubbish rationing and wheelie bin fines in the name of saving the environment now have to live with the pollution risks of incinerators.

"A report from the Environment Department admitted the amount of rubbish being recycled by town halls is ‘levelling off’ and that the amount of rubbish kept out of landfill is still far short of targets set by the European Union."