YOUR article on motorway littering ("Drive to clear motorways of 120 tonnes of litter each year", The Herald, June 10) and the accompanying editorial ("Let us put litter in its place", The Herald, June 10) were valuable in asking people to behave more responsibly by taking their litter home.

However, taking one's litter home is only one part of the answer to this problem.

Modern retail distribution relies on wrapping almost everything we buy in high-tech and virtually indestructible packaging. The volumes of resultant waste are huge.

Packaging is a boon for the manufacturers and retailers as it keeps their costs down and disposal of the waste is not their responsibility. Our society is drowning in packaging and we must look to ways of reducing the use of these materials, reusing where possible (for example, bottles), and making all of what we must use either recyclable or biodegradable. The manufacturers and retailers may cavil at the increased costs, but either they pay or society pays through waste disposal charges, or by suffering an environment strewn with the debris of our technological age.

Bob Downie,

66 Mansewood Road, Glasgow.