In 2017 the Government’s manifesto’s referenced ‘supporting comprehensive rubbish collection and recycling’. This seems far removed from the idea of free garden waste collections for households with gardens in Our Waste, Our Resources: a Strategy for England. All councils should be concerned by this costly, inefficient proposal.

The premise behind the idea is garden waste sent to landfill can generate greenhouse gas emissions akin to those from food waste. Bizarrely, there is no reference to the first principle of treating garden waste, which is to compost and reuse it on site – as I and many others do.