My Lords, indeed that is the answer, but one can put together what I would call compatible waste, which can be separated easily, or one can put together incompatible waste such as plastic and paper and create an almost insoluble problem. Will the noble Baroness consider whether we need to think about that at later stages of the Bill? If we make the job technically difficult for the waste collection authorities, there ceases to be a good point in doing anything. That is a simple technical question on the Bill. I commend the rest of the Bill.

We do not have a good record on how we handle waste in this country, and in particular on how we recycle it. The European directive targets, which will be the targets that this country will adopt for 2010 and onwards, are not those originally proposed for the Bill, which were rather more ambitious. None the less, they are better than nothing, and there seem to be some indications that we shall have difficulty hitting those targets. I hope that that is not the case. This is an area where the Community is very keen to move rapidly. As I said, authorities can and will take action.

The question of finance was raised by, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock. The one fact that we should remember, although it may not be happening to a sufficient degree, is that we have a landfill tax. That ought to be totally and automatically recycled into the waste collection business for the coming decade or more, to ensure the necessary investment both to make recycling realistic and, more importantly, to make sure that we deal with the disposal of waste that cannot be recycled in a way that is environmentally protective. We have to face the fact that such systems are expensive to introduce. Simply incinerating waste is no longer acceptable. If the investment is to come forward, some pump priming will be necessary. I have always thought that the tax generated as a result of waste disposal using landfill ought to be the investment source for curing the problem.

The Bill is welcome. It could have been better, but it is certainly better than nothing.