The latest set of recycling targets and proposals could never have been issued by a group of level-headed men and women.
I have come to the conclusion that they pluck both figures and concepts out of the air and hurl them at unsuspecting industries in the hope that some of them will stick.
At their first reading on the Revision of the Packaging Directive MEPs voted to increase recycling to 65%.
Now there is no way that this is going to happen. We all know that. Thank God for the one sane MEP who called for general objectives for recycling to be fixed at a local level.
But, for every sane MEP, there appears to be an abundance of the less balanced variety and it would appear that such individuals might be responsible for calling for an indicator to measure packaging's environmental impact. Do these people believe that such a proposal is realistically feasible in sophisticated markets?
Surely, life cycle analyses can only be carried out by taking any one of a multiplicity of parameters into consideration, not least of them being what is to be contained by the pack and how far that pack has to travel before its contents are used or, more importantly, consumed.
Perhaps, it is time to reflect on the excellent example set by the packaging industry and compare it, say, to the automotive industry.
Perhaps, it is also time to consider that, while recycling is a discipline to be encouraged, not all recycling is useful to the environment.
Perhaps, it is also time to just say NO, particularly when so many politicians appear to be suffering from a superfluity of ignorance about an industry that serves them so well.
