The North-South divide has been split open again - this time by a survey into recycling.

A report by the environmentalists behind the Keep Britain Tidy campaign says people in the North West and Yorkshire are the worst at recycling.

The "greenest" are well-off home-owning couples in their 40s and 50s, mostly living in the South West, South East and London.

The survey was carried out by charity Environmental Campaigns (ENCAMS) to find out why England is lagging so far behind its European counterparts on recycling.

The biggest incentive for people to recycle was the fear that a landfill site could be opened up on their doorstep or that the government would start charging them for the amount of rubbish they binned, the survey found.

Image problem

Those who admitted to doing absolutely nothing included those who do not read newspapers and believe the only people who do recycle are "hippies, loonies and anoraks".

ENCAMS marketing director Sue Nelson said: "Recycling has an image problem and this is something organisations, pressure groups and councils have to think about.

"From the language we use to the campaigns we run and the publicity events we stage, we have to consider how that comes across.

"The only way to reduce the rubbish we create is to include everyone and we'll never do that unless we make environmentalism more about the mainstream than the extreme."

The survey, which involved 1,000 street interviews across England, comes after a recent government report showed that recycling rates have increased only slightly over the last eight years.