Rubbish! : dirt on our hands and crisis ahead

Rubbish is arguably Britain's most pressing environmental concern.

Challenging and controversial, this is a rigorous examination of the problems of waste in the UK and the efficacy of the public and private initiatives designed to forestall a crisis fast ballooning into catastrophe This is the story of our rubbish - from the first human bowel movement to the littering of outer space.

With a hankerchief to his nose, Girling picks through our fridge moutain, our crumbling sewers, trading waste, packaging waste, hazardous (=terrifying) industrial waste, spam emails and other new forms of waste, the horrifying residues of incineration.. and he attempts to find a blueprint for our survival, the way our lives may HAVE to change.

Each year the English and the Welsh throw out 100m tonnes of waste - more than half of it goes into the ground.

The volume of our domestic trash is rising by 3 per cent a year.

At some point and at some point very soon it has to stop. Or one way or another the trash will overpower us.