The amount of rubbish dumped around Bradford is a disgrace. Most of us are well enough aware of that. It has been said often enough. However the latest statistics produced by the Council dramatically illustrate just how much of a disgrace it really is.

We are asked to imagine a footpath three feet wide stretching for ten miles between Bradford and Leeds and filled with old mattresses, fridges, beds, bags of rotting food....Around 3,200 tonnes of it in total.

That represents a huge amount of work for the council employees and voluntary groups who last year cleared away this huge volume of waste, as well as a considerable additional cost to the council taxpayers. And it also represents a massive lack of pride among those members of the community who are responsible for generating it.

Perhaps there is more the Council could do to improve facilities, although it already offers a collection service for bulk items and has its household-waste centres at Dowley Gap and Bowling Back Lane open at convenient times for the public.

There is possibly more that could be done to emphasis just how socially unacceptable dumping is, through an increase in high-profile prosecutions- particularly of those who dump commercial waste to avoid disposal charges.

But the real key to a tidier Bradford is encouraging a sense of responsibility throughout the community until those individuals who presently think nothing of spoiling the environment start to take the same sort of pride in it as members of community groups who presently work so hard to clean it up.