Few people think about rubbish after they have put it in their bin except when things go wrong.

That happened this week for thousands of people in Brighton and Hove when contractors Sita experienced problems after changing the dates for many household collections.

Sita's problems should be resolved within a few weeks if not days but there is an underlying problem with rubbish in Sussex that is much more serious.

The county is running out of holes for dumping refuse and has not so far found many alternative ways of dealing with it.

In East Sussex, there is so much dithering about what to do for fear of offending anyone that the end result could be transporting rubbish away, perhaps as far as Lincolnshire.

This would be hideously expensive and an environmental disaster, but it is a real possibility.

At present we recycle around ten per cent of our rubbish. It is not much but it is a great improvement on 20 years ago when can and bottle banks were a rarity.

Most councils want to increase it to around 50 per cent within a decade but they will have to work much harder than at present if that is to be achieved.

Keen recyclers like me leave one small bag of rubbish for the binmen every week but we are rarities. Most people need cajoling and persuading even to think about it. The best method of persuasion is doorstep collections but these are expensive to operate. While Adur has operated such a scheme for years, Brighton and Hove, despite all its green credentials, still has not come up with the goods.

It's easy to look on recycling as a simple and environmentally-friendly process but that is not always so. The market fluctuates wildly for paper and at present there is a glut of green bottles. Brighton and Hove stopped collecting plastic several years ago and has not resumed it even though other local authorities still do it.

The process of recycling paper and glass is an industrial one which uses heat and energy. This is often forgotten in all the arguments over waste. Not much can be done about the paper but it would be much better of charging a deposit on each bottle was resumed. Apart from anything else, this would revive a useful cottage industry for children.

How do you fill the gap between recycling and landfill?

The obvious answer is incineration, used successfully for years at places like Pebsham, near Bexhill, and the Isle of Wight.

The advantage is that rubbish can be used to produce energy. The disadvantage is that some of the refuse could produce toxic fumes when set alight. We are told modern technology reduces that to a minimum and stringent tests are applied to plants built here and abroad.

Even though I am always suspicious of experts who say there is little or no risk to health from such processes I would not mind if one was installed in Shoreham Harbour fairly near my home.

I fancy the health risk would be far less than that from the 30,000 cars which pollute the seafront daily and that any new plant would be far cleaner than the old incinerator at Leighton Road in Hove which belched out fumes for years.

The only entirely environmentally-friendly and effective form of recycling is composting which should be encouraged as much as possible. Widespread use would reduce the waste mountain and help create many glorious gardens.

As for the rest of the rubbish, councillors need to make bold decisions and accept they will have to annoy some people instead of trying to sweep all the rubbish under the municipal carpet.