MY thoughts this week have been dominated by rubbish.

Some of you may think that’s a permanent thing. But I assure you, it’s not.

I’m talking about things that you chuck away – leftover food, plastic bottles, nappies, toiletries etc.

Everywhere else you go it seems that these unwanted items end up where they should do – in the bin.

But in Brighton and Hove it seems that convention is thrown out the window – with most of our waste going the same way onto the streets below.

For too long now this has been blamed on animals.

It’s those pesky seagulls, it’s the brazen foxes, it’s the sneaky rodents – half of the species on Noah’s Ark have been blamed for rubbish being strewn across the streets.

But when you explain this to outsiders, they look at you as if you’ve just proclaimed biblical floods are on the way.

They just don’t get it.

The other week I was left rather red- faced when, walking down a relatively quiet city centre street, the pavement was blocked by several plastic bags piled up at the foot of a communal bin.

Naturally, they had been ripped apart.

The result was banana skins, yogurt pots, kitchen towels and what could have been left-over spaghetti bolognese strewn over the pathway.

“Do people actually live in this?” my companion asked.

I tried to make excuses – we live in a busy city, there’s no room for people to have individual bins, the seagulls make it worse...

“But why are they there in the first place?” was the response.

I had no answer.

The truth is, it seems that the majority of people in the city have accepted that the streets of Brighton and Hove are filthy.

At times, some are so grim that those in the town hall could make some money by offering them to film crews as an authentic late 18th Century film set. And the problem is not our feathered or furry friends – it’s us humans, the real animals.

Case in point was last weekend when, the morning after a particularly hot day, there was a sole worker from Cityclean sweeping up the mess left on Hove Lawns.

Most of it was related to barbecues, which are supposedly banned from there in the first place.

And while people are more than happy to carry heavy bags full of food and drink down to the lawns in the first place, it seems when it comes to taking them an extra bit further to the bin, they come across all CBA – can’t be ahh... (you get my drift). The feeling is that someone else will do it. Well, it’s selfish, it’s disgusting and it’s wrong.

Mass clear up events like the one organised by The Argus last Monday do help.

It’s not unreasonable to suggest that every now and again park patrols visit the seafront with police support and issue on-the-spot fines to anyone leaving their waste.

Away from the seafront and it’s pleasing to see that the new minority Labour administration is already taking the issue very seriously.

In the past week, plans to introduce wheelie bins for recycling in suburban areas have been announced. It is a good start.

The small black boxes currently handed out are cumbersome and, once full, are not the easiest things to move.

Once you manoeuvre them to the front of your property, quite often getting some form of liquid or food down your freshly ironed top in the process, they remain open to the elements – or the wildlife.

Also planned is a garden waste collection scheme, which has been far too long in coming forward.

Currently, people have to lug their lawn mowings and tree cuttings to the tip.

That’s if they are lucky enough to have access to a car.

Also planned is a new commercial waste collection, which will stop small businesses from having to leave their rubbish in plastic bags on the street overnight for private firms to pick them up.

Instead, they will pay the council for special sacks which can then be thrown into the existing communal containers on the street.

Even better are the proposals to replace some of the big black bins with solar-powered containers, which will compress the waste and create more space.

All these measures combined should have an impact on the city’s woeful recycling rates while making the streets look cleaner.

But only if there’s proper enforcement and people are hit where it hurts – in the pocket.