AFTER it was revealed recently that Edinburgh had met national recycling targets for the first time, the city's environment chief, Bob Cairns, said he was "absolutely delighted" with Edinburgh's recycling rate. Well, I'm not - I think it could be a lot better.

When Clackmannanshire can divert more than 40 per cent of its household rubbish from landfill, why do we only manage to recycle around one quarter of our bottles, paper, glass and garden waste?

Fine, we're performing much better than we used to - and we're certainly not the worst in the country (the distinctly non-Green residents of Dumfries and Galloway dump 90 per cent of their waste in landfill) - but as the capital city, Edinburgh should be leading the way.

Let's face it, there's no excuse for not knowing about the threats facing our environment - the warnings scream at us from the newspaper stands, the TV sets and from every politician - even the blue ones nowadays.

So, why isn't everyone doing their bit for the planet and pushing Edinburgh's recycling rate towards 40, 50, even 60 per cent?

This newspaper recently ran a story on the latest recycling figures in the city, and we asked a selection of our readers how much of their household waste they recycle.

Mechanic Adam Matthews said: "None whatsoever. It's just too much hassle."

Student Matthew Wright said: "None - I'm a typical student and don't worry about recycling."

And childminder Audrey Patterson said: "It's difficult to find the time when you're working with young children."

In fact, everyone we spoke to said they knew they should recycle more, but were put off by the inconvenience.

And here's a confession - I'm the same. I do what I can, but it's not nearly enough.

The empty beer and wine bottles usually make it to the bottle bank at Tesco - a ritual instilled in me as a young lad who enjoyed the sound of smashing glass.

Too much time in the Evening News office and not enough time at the gym means I regularly find clothes no longer fit, and they sometimes make it to the recycling bank if eBay can't help out.

And when I venture into the pathetic excuse for a garden at the rear of my flat for the annual mow of the lawn, the cobwebs get dusted off my brown bin. But that's it.

So if it wasn't for a mixture of laziness and forgetfulness I could be doing more. However, if I had one of these blue or red boxes that the council has distributed to 100,000 homes in the Capital, all that could change.

Being able to leave cans, glass, paper, textiles, cardboard, drinks cartons and cereal boxes outside my front door would make recycling a whole lot easier (once I've figured out which box is which and what day they get collected).

Like thousands of other first, second and third-floor dwellers, recycling is made that much harder.

The council will no doubt point out that there are around 700 on-street recycling points across the city, with more to come.

But I don't want a huge container dumped on my street - just give me a blue and red box. That's how to boost the recycling rate of the Roden household.

So, what else can be done to help those residents already armed with the full array of multi-coloured recycling options, but who still want to cut down on the amount of household waste going to landfill?

As Green MSP Robin Harper frequently says, the Executive's 25 per cent recycling target is "neither ambitious nor unrealistic".

One obvious option would be to increase the variety of waste that can be recycled, especially plastic. Batteries are another avenue that could be pursued.

And the problems caused by business and commercial waste, which represents around 75 per cent of the rubbish dumped in landfills every year, could be better targeted.

Scotland's recycling rate is ahead of the UK average of 18 per cent, but it's still far behind some other European countries - in the Netherlands and Austria, nearly 60 per cent of waste is recycled.

Last week, there were also warnings from Clackmannanshire that unless new markets are created for recycled waste, it might end up simply piling up in storage facilities. That's something that clearly needs to be closely monitored. But it shouldn't discourage councils such as Edinburgh from striving to push up their recycling rates, which will in turn lead to a healthy environment.

Soruce