What if the Earth could talk? What would it have to say about
global warming? “I’ll be absolutely fine,” is what, according to satirical British news website The Daily Mash.

In a brief ‘interview’, Earth, (age: 4,000,000,000; location: 93 million miles from the Sun), tells the website that humans seem to be confusing the health of the planet with the survival of their own species.

“I might get a bit warmer and a bit wetter, but to be honest, that actually sounds quite nice,” the planet says in one of the few quotes that are in language moderate enough to be repeated on a Reuters blog.

Before rushing off to do some more orbiting, the busy planet told The Daily Mash that environmental campaigners should drop trying to ‘Save the Planet’ and adopt a more apt slogan such as ‘Save Your Sorry Arse’.

The lighthearted article makes a similar point to one made in “The World Without Us” by U.S. journalist Alan Weisman, which imagines what would happen to the Earth if the human race were wiped out - in a few more words, he concludes, it would indeed get along just fine.

It’s not an issue that often brings thousands of people into the streets - but recycling is a hot topic in Naples, the southern Italian city which has run out of landfills to put household waste which has accumulated in huge, stinking mounds in the streets.

Locals are resisting the emergency re-opening of dumps that are officially full and a giant incinerator won’t be ready for months or perhaps years.

The answer, some say, is recycling which would vastly reduce the volume of waste being dumped or burned. But for recycling, you need to sort trash into categories that can be reprocessed - like glass, paper and metal - from that which can’t. Despite the presence of recycling skips around Naples, only 10 percent of waste there is collected separately from the general waste stream, compared with 38 percent in northern Italy.

“Door-to-door collection of sorted waste now!” read a banner at a protest in Naples this week.

The question is: after 14 years officially in a waste “state of emergency” where politicians have failed to create a system that can handle waste disposal - a sector heavily infiltrated by the Camorra mafia - will the city ever be able to organise a workable recycling scheme?