No they're not. Without a proper copper to feel their collar and give them a smart smacking they will never learn.

John Lee, USSR of Ellesmere Port, Cheshi, Disunited Kingdom

Ok, lets see what we can do to extend this. How about a refundable deposit system for all packaging? The manufacturer stamps each piece of packaging with a 10p deposit, collected at the checkout, and the buyer gets 8p back when they produce the packaging at their local store/waste depot. The 2p difference would go to administer the system.Yes, it WOULD be expensive - but it would solve most of the litter problem apart from gum and cigarette butts, and it would be a powerful incentive to recycle.

Roger C, Kamloops, Canada

No, you don't "change behaviour by giving positive incentives" when the litter includes cans, fast-food packages, cigarette stubs, spat-out chewing gum, and wholesale dumping.

And certainly not when the behaviour has become habitual, and extends from littering, grafitti, foul language, drunkenness, roudiness and drug-taking, to utter contempt for anything apart from self-gratification and a host of 'rights'; and when these aspects are merely the obvious symptoms of a nation whose culture and traditional values have been targetted for destruction for decades.

Appalling public behaviour; public & private sexual immorality; broken families; a dirty, dangerous NHS; chaotic schools; run-down industries; criminally-neglected Armed Forces; incompetent, politically-correct police & courts allowing rampant crime, and all the rest, cannot be rectified by tinkering feebly in a vacuum.

Only a major political transformation will do : and what party offers that except the BNP ?

L Stewart, Spalding, Lincolnshire

It is unfortunate that these days incentives have to be given for doing things that we should all be doing anyway. School kids are receiving money to stay on in education (it's only for their own benefit), money paid to family members for caring for their own relatives (next we'll be paying mothers to care properly for their own children). What happened to social and familial responsibility? What happened to self responsibility? Too much is being done by the state or the 'system' and this is eroding our own responsibilities further.

RB, London,

In the state of South Australia, every glass and alican drink container has a 5 cents (probably about 2p) refundable deposit included in the over the counter price; after big sporting events at, say, the Adelaide Oval, there is not one to be seen. Strangely, no other state or territory has done the same, although some are now saying that it will be "looked into", or that "a process of enquiry has been fasttracked", or some such tosh. However, a recent newspaper report claimed that, overall, the recycling rate in SA for items other than drink containers was lower than the national average.

L Colquhoun and M Stuart-Mackenzie, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia