CHANGING hearts and minds about the need for householders to recycle rubbish is not an easy task.

We cannot go on forever emptying the contents of our dustbins into disused quarries or burying them in holes in the ground without the risk of drowning in our own waste.

But that's a concept that is very difficult to put across to the man in the street.

Also old habits die hard and since sorting out rubbish does involve extra time and effort not everyone will be easily persuaded to change their way of doing things without being able to see some tangible advantages of recycling.

In Hyndburn people wanting to keep fit will soon benefit because a large chunk of the £500,000 needed to build a new athletics track at Wilsons Playing Fields, Clayton-le-Moors is coming from, well, rubbish.

Waste disposal company Sita's environmental trust is putting in £136,000 and another £50,000 is being donated by the Environment Agency out of the money generated by the Landfill Tax - effectively a fine on local authorities not doing enough to dispose of waste by green means.

Those behind the project repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to get lottery funding before discovering there was more brass in muck - or at least recycling muck!