IT seems far too many of us are putting wet newspaper, damp cardboard and, horrors - cooked food - into our recycling bins.

Almost ten per cent of waste currently being put into Craven District Council blue recycling bins cannot be recycled.

And, if the council reaches that trigger point, it will incur a penalty, which isn’t good for all of us, not to mention the planet.

We could all do better - how many of us think it’s all right to use the recycling bin as a overflow for general rubbish? We might not give the baked bin tin a wash out, we might chuck the dog food can straight in to bin, no one really wants to clean nasty smelling dog food off after all; then there’s all those Amazon cardboard boxes left outside in the rain - none of this will do; frankly its lazy, and we definitely - as a whole - need to do much better.

The council’s lead member for Greener Craven has said it’s all about education - and that means officers going into schools and talking to children about the importance of recycling. Children get it, as we all know, and so go home and start work on their parents.

Whatever we might think about the use of recycling - its really not difficult to rinse out cans, to take note of what can and cannot be recycled, and how about setting up a compost heap?