IT is disheartening that - with our planet dying around us - the patient efforts of our local district council to encourage us to examine and modify our unsustainable and wasteful lifestyles continue to be criticised on an issue as petty as the supply of black bin bags!

Just because the sun continues to rise each morning, the seasons come and go and our supermarket shelves are still stocked to the gunnels does not mean we are not facing an ecological crisis.

One of the ways in which we can all work together locally to make an impact globally and limit the often irreparable damage caused by waste, is to decrease our household waste at source and recycle as much as possible.

Coun John Raine should be congratulated on implementing a kerbside recycling scheme that can boast a recycling rate of 25 per cent, a figure that has been achieved in a relatively short period and which compares more than favourably with the disgraceful national average of around 14 per cent.

Britain is still the 'Dirty Man of Europe' and has one of the worst recycling rates, while countries such as Austria, Netherlands and Germany each recycle around 60 per cent.

The British government forecast, almost gleefully, that the 2005 Christmas festivities would create an extra 3 million tonnes of waste and not even a quarter of this would be recycled. We should be ashamed of ourselves!

Please, let's all consider what we are putting into our black plastic bags and try to use them less and make more use of the purple and clear bags. It takes no extra time or energy, just a thought for the type of world we want our children and grandchildren to inherit.

An efficient kerbside recycling scheme may cost us a little extra in our Council Tax now, but the potential economic, environmental, social and cultural costs of not reducing waste and recycling and re-using as much as possible, are incalculable.

Jan Dyer, Old Hollow, North Malvern.