At the Forefront of Green Technology

The Ministry for War and the Colonies, which in the past has accommodated such hefty piles of recyclable rubbish as Geoff Hoon and Des Browne, has been requested to provide storage space for "thousands of tonnes of cars, tin cans, plastic bottles and glass" until market forces are obliging enough to find a use for them. Such is the joined-upness of the Government's green agenda that further mountains of paper, plastic and steel have also accumulated, and despite our officially limitless supplies of clean coal, sustainable uranium and space for uncontrolled population growth it appears that landfill sites are at a bit of a premium. "Britain's landfill capacity would last until 2012 if recycled goods were buried underground": a course of action that has a certain surreal charm about it. The year of the London Olympics would hardly be complete without at least one spectacular example of the great British sport of civic ineptitude.