Some 45 per cent of Swiss domestic waste is recycled and the rest incinerated in any one of about 28 municipal incinerators across the country.
The recyclables are collected at the roadside and bring centres. Materials collected include paper and cardboard, packaging glass bottles, aluminium and tin, PET bottles - standard fizzy drinks plastic bottles - textiles, batteries, oils and compostable waste.
Most people keep only one bin for compostable waste. The other materials are collected in bags.
The paper is collected at the roadside, as is the compostable waste in the bins. The glass bottles, PET bottles, aluminium, tin and batteries are taken to bring centres or brought back to the shops from where they were bought. Textile are collected in two ways, at the roadside and at collection points. The Swiss have been collecting glass and paper since the second World War, and in 2001, the last year for which figures are available the average consumption of paper per capita was 232kg, of which 161kg was recycled. The rate of used paper back in production was 64.4 per cent.
For glass the rate of collection as a percentage of consumption was even better at 91.7 per cent. Aluminium figures were lower at about 27 per cent but beverage can recovery was 91.6 per cent. The rate of recovery of bottles was 82 per cent and for tin cans, 70 per cent.
The amount of textiles and shoes collected was 40,000 which was not expressed as a percentage of the amount of clothing sold. Some 67 per cent of batteries were also collected.
According to Dr Peter Gerber of the Waste Management Division of the Swiss Agency for the Environment, Forests and Landscape (SAEFL) markets have been sourced for all of the material collected, although some items are exported to Germany and Holland.
In recent years campaigns have focused on waste avoidance, encouraging householders to buy less packaging and create less waste. In industry too the focus has been on adopting processes which do not leave by-products which are difficult to recycle or reuse. The Swiss have, for example, banned the use of phosphates in washing powders, which they said was unnecessary and caused serious water pollution. In terms of incineration the Swiss experience goes back to 1902 when the first waste incinerator was built. Much of the country's chemical and pharmaceutical industry has its own incineration facilities which are monitored and licensed by SAFEL.
At Basel on the German/ French border - where many of Switzerland's chemical and pharmaceutical industries are located, the pharmaceutical company Novartis runs its own, urban, incinerator. Asked about dioxin emissions, Mr Werner Wagner, manager of the incinerator, maintained that more dioxins were recorded in the 140 metre stretch of the local road which passed the plant, than those which emanate from it.
The Swiss have been closing down their older "dirtier" incinerators in favour of the new generation which are fitted with DeNox installations. One such new facility is the incinerator for the Town of Geneva and its environs, the largest urban incinerator in Switzerland which handles about 350,000 tonnes of waste every year and is developing district heating facilities.
According to Mr Herve Guignand, head of section at the plant, the background is regularly monitored for effects on air, water, ground-water, soil, noise, fauna, and nuisance values such as traffic.
