It's time to draw a line under the throwaway society, according to a top waste expert.

Australian Gerard Gillespie quoted a Navaho proverb as he called for a massive shift from landfill and incineration towards recycling.

"You are the people we have been waiting for," he told an audience at the Brighton Centre last night.

Mr Gillespie has worked in the Australian capital Canberra since it became the first city in the world with a 'zero waste' policy.

Today its 311,000 people recycle 66 per cent of their rubbish and the figure is still rising - a record he says Britain could emulate.

He said: "You have everything you need to do 100 per cent recycling, or zero waste, right here in this country.

"This is not church, this is not a religion, this is not a fixation, this is a business and to run it as a business it needs to be resourced as a business."

More than 500,000 tones of refuse are recycled every year in Canberra and 200 full-time jobs have been created since the zero waste policy was adopted.

Mr Gillespie dismissed claims that 30 per cent was the highest recycling target a community could achieve as "claptrap", pointing to examples around the world where figures as high as 85 per cent were common.

He said: "All you need to do to recycle everything in this town, everything in this community, is to design a system before you start - but you need to resource it, you need to invest in it."

He said organic waste should be composted and the finished product returned to the soil, which in many countries had been made unstable through modern farming methods.

Turning to incineration, he said American research indicated burners could cause an increase in cancers.

Experience in Australia and New Zealand has found more than 90 per cent of people support recycling and take part in recycling schemes if they are made easy.

The talk was sponsored by the Evening Argus and Magpie Recycling.