Labour's wasted opportunity will cost you more

11.09.00am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 25th Sep 2008

Alarm bells are ringing over the UK's failure to recycle waste, according to an Audit Commission report published today. Tough targets on recycling set by the EU to reduce landfill, which is still the UK's preferred method and which emits methane a more deadly gas than carbon dioxide as a contributor to Global Warming, look set to be missed.

Why should this worry you? Well aside from all the arguments that we should recycle more waste anyway - the UK is Europe's worst polluter - the new rules means that missed targets will result in heavy fines on Councils of up to £2million.

Closer to home, Labour Lambeth has signally failed to get to grips with the issue. Under the Lib Dems the handy, convenient and widely-praised orange sack recycling scheme which Labour criticized saw recycling shoot up from under 8% during their 1998-2002 Council to around 24% in the following four years.

When Labour came back into power in 2006, the environment was no longer such a priority, recycling rates stalled and have now actually fallen back. This summer, they actually ran out of recycling and garden waste recycling sacks. This is an absolute disgrace for a Council that likes to style itself, cleaner and greener.

What it will mean, though, for average Council Tax payers, is that life under a future Labour Lambeth will become not so much cleaner and greener but dearer and dearer - simply because they have failed to make improving the environment a top priority.

There's one fundamental thing about the environment that Labour just does not get - we all have to live in it.

Labour's so-called commitment to the environment?

Green? They think you are.