Could recycling save a city?

The recent news footage of the rubbish problem in Naples is rather disturbing. This is a modern city, in a modern world but it cannot deal with its own waste. The images clearly show that amongst the litter is cardboard and many other recyclable materials. I suppose, to some extent, I take for granted the kerbside recycling collection in my area, its not something I really think about any more as I’ve been recycling for so many years now. Taking the glass to the bottle bank is habit for me now, as is separating the paper from the plastic and taking the veg peelings to the compost bin. Waste is such a huge issue; in Naples they have run out of space to put their waste. In New York they had Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island – personally, I find the idea of dumping your unwanted waste on an island a rather dismissive attitude. (Perhaps I’m biased because I used to live on the Isle of Wight but it feels rather like an Alcatraz idea to me: keeping something you don’t want to think about at a distance rather than confronting and dealing with the problem.) There’s also a floating pile of rubbish drifting around the Pacific Ocean. Recycling, reusing and avoiding packaging can stop these problems from getting worse. I don’t know if the litter we’ve already created can ever go away but we really should be doing everything we can to stop them from getting worse. If we don’t, then more and more cities will be stinking like Naples.