THE other day my six year-old wanted to know where all the rubbish went?

The answer to this puzzling question was simple. It goes in the bin. But where does it go from there?

Well, the refuse collectors take it away and then they dump it in a landfill.

This is was quite shocking to the kid who then preceded to ask why we dumped our rubbish and then buried it.

If you think about it I was hoping I could come up with a much cleverer answer.

But no, we dump it in some field somewhere and then hope it decomposes.

And we like to dump it far away from where we can see it.

As long as we don’t have to deal with it then everyone is a happy chap.

The kid didn’t stop there. He then wanted to know what happened to this rubbish in a hundred years.

Well, the stuff that decomposes does just that, and other things like carrier bags and plastic toys will stick around a while longer.

How much longer?

Luckily my friend Google was there to help me get to the bottom of this.

Okay, a paper towel takes a few weeks; a tin can, 50 years and plastic bottles, 450 years. Plastic bags could take anywhere up to a total of 1000 years.

After a few moments, he said: “So, we are a pretty stupid lot really aren’t we?”

“Well, what would you have us do then?” I asked him.

“We shouldn’t be allowed to use the stuff that doesn’t decompose.”

Yeah, that’s not as easy as it sounds, son.

His next question got me thinking even more.

“So, what happens when we run out of space to dump the rubbish?”

“Well, we can always go to the moon!”

That was not the answer he wanted so we have now started a new campaign to ensure we only dump the stuff that can decompose.

Everything that looks like it could last more than 10 years is being reused until it falls apart.

I thought we could start with the plastic toys.