REGULAR readers of this column will be familiar with my feeble, though well intentioned, efforts to ‘Go Green’.

A bit selective, I admit: I haven’t yet had the heart to get my son up half an hour early so we can save the planet by walking to school instead of driving, even though it’s his generation that will have to live with whatever destruction that our generation has wrought. But I have a thing about wasting food (hence Barney the beagle now attending doggy fat clinic) and about composting vegetable peelings and recycling whenever I can.

At midnight every other Wednesday I can be found out in the street disturbing the neighbours and startling the cats sorting out recyclable plastic, cardboard, glass, paper, material and garden waste into my blue bin and black box for the council to come and collect the next day.

When my brother lived in Switzerland they had a fabulous system where they charged households for every black waste bag they collected, while recycling was free. So effective; I used to help my brother scavenge through the waste bag for every last scrap of recyclable material… I find myself increasingly annoyed and frustrated by the growing volume of waste packaging that I am now putting out to be recycled. I know I’m not the only one to order something small online only to have it arrive in a cardboard box the size of a small farm animal.

Four Candles will forever in my mind be associated with the Two Ronnies, but a colleague recently came into work with her own take on it; excited by the large, exciting-looking box that arrived at her front door, only to be disappointed by its meagre contents. Sure, it’s not going to landfill, but there seems to be so much of it I can’t help wondering how much energy and effort is wasted producing it in the first place.

About 170 kg of packaging waste is generated annually per person in the EU with paper and cardboard, glass, plastic, wood and metal being, in that order, the most common types of packaging waste.

However, it’s my car that causes me greatest angst. A 10-year-old diesel, that recently sailed through its MOT with no sign of giving up the ghost. Everything I read tells me that I am poisoning old people and children and destroying the planet every time I take it out. But everything I read tells me that the significant environmental costs to both manufacturing a new car and adding my old car to the ever-growing collective junk heap means that it is better from a green perspective to keep my old car running and well-maintained as long as I can.