Recycling incentives: 'Fines aren't just unpopular, they wouldn't work'

Soon many of us will be getting kerbside collections of plastic and food waste too.

But, unfortunately, all that still leaves us trailing far behind where we need to be.

Two-thirds of our household rubbish still heads straight to landfill, leaving the city council to pay heavy financial penalties.

So we are inevitably going to be prodded and pulled to do more.

The big question is how that will be done. Will it be the carrot or the stick?

Thankfully, the city is following the smart route.

Not only would attempts to punish the one in five city residents who don't recycle be unpopular, they wouldn't work.

Evidence elsewhere suggests that incentives and better recycling facilities in tenements and flats - where most of the one in five live - are what works. And fines don't.

The council's plans for cash incentives is sound in principle.

Creating a system that is fair will be the tricky bit, but the city needs to press on and do that.

Reasons for hope

PARENTS will be alarmed to learn that children as young as ten are being picked up drunk or on drugs in the Capital.

Especially as our revelations today comes less than a month after we revealed that the number of children under 16 being arrested for serious crimes nearly doubled last year.

But there are good reasons to hope that the problems are being tackled. For a start, while some of the culprits were younger than ever before, the overall number referred to the Children's Panel for drink or drug use in 2009 was about half that in 2008.

Similarly, while serious crimes committed by children last year were up, the number of crimes of all types was well down on the previous 12 months.

With 357 children reported for committing crimes last year, and 26 under-12s caught drinking or on drugs, the number is still too high. But the trends are going in the right direction.