Sir, I recently attended a very interesting meeting organised by PLANED's Jo Brookman, regarding the very topical subject of recycling household waste and what is really happening to our rubbish. The meeting was aimed more at the tourist trade who have so much more waste to get rid of, but I felt that the disposal of our everyday general household waste was a subject worth a bit more publicity. Apparently there is in existence for some areas of Pembrokeshire, an orange bag scheme. These bags are for the collection of plastic bottles (only), newspapers and magazines, cans and tins, cardboard (cereal and detergent boxes) and clean aluminium foil. The scheme will eventually spread to the whole county by 2010. No wax cartons, yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, etc must go into the orange bags, so we have to hope the public will be careful enough to differentiate between the types of plastic! Everything else still goes into landfill via the black bags. One major problem with this is that we are rapidly running out of these sites in Wales and may one day have to transport our waste to English landfill sites. Whilst we are able to use our own sites, it costs £28 per tonne to dispose of the black bags, increasing by £3 year on year until 2010. There is also a disposal charge, basically doubling the cost to £34.22 per tonne. Apparently, to transport waste to England would ultimately cost £200 per tonne. The Government is prepared to hit us where it hurts as we ultimately pick up the bill through our rates and taxes. However, there is a private company called Carmarthenshire Recycling who have recently opened a new depot in Whitland where they will take any household waste, including all plastic. This is sorted by hand and sold to various reprocessing firms that make a variety of goods, from fleeces to garden furniture. Although we are avid recyclers, this week we collected all our plastic, cardboard, tins and glass, composted our veg peelings and put out two-thirds of a black bag with what was left over. We will take the rest to Whitland, perhaps once a month. With just a little bit of effort, it can be done, and from an environmental point of view, it must be done. Tessa Pearson,

Saundersfoot.