HOW lucky we are that Andy D'Agorne "successfully pushed for plastics and card kerbside collection to be investigated" (Letters, February 14).

I suppose this must rank alongside his successful pushing for the sun to rise tomorrow and for next year to be called 2007.

The Greens have played no part in developing the strategy for plastics and card kerbside collections, they have refused to engage constructively with the ruling administration in advancing the environmental sustainability agenda, preferring to sit on the sidelines with Labour carping at each and every initiative and action taken by this council.

Like Labour, all he has done is to call endlessly for more consultation and less action. It is only a matter of weeks since he blessed us, in this paper, with the Green Party's view on how we needed to achieve 100 per cent recycling.

When Stephen Lewis asked him how this would be achieved he answered "by increasing recycling". That is, unfortunately, as deep as Green thinking gets on the environmental problems facing us.

While Coun D'Agorne seeks to be all things to all people, councils across the country are having to engage with the real issues of tackling the mountains of waste we produce and reducing our CO2 emissions.

All over Europe, local authorities recycle and incinerate, and are broadly much better at both than we are in the UK.

For details go to the internet and check out:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/waste/kf/wrkf08.htm

Simplistic diatribes against incineration are no substitute for an informed debate. Maybe Coun D'Agorne could turn his abilities to successfully pushing for a worldwide web to be developed to allow citizens to find out what is happening for themselves.

Coun Christian Vassie,

Blake Court,

Wheldrake,

York.

Updated: 10:20 Thursday, February 16, 2006