Switzerland made mistakes in the past in its handling of waste managementand water pollution, but the best lesson for us is the willingness shownthere to take responsibility and decisive action, writes Tim O'Brien.
Imagine a knock on the door. It is not about reading the ESB meter, it is about pollution levels in your chimney.
A meter has been inserted into the flue through the fireplace and if you have been sneakily cutting down on your waste charges by burning domestic rubbish in your fireplace, it won't be long until you are paying a hefty fine.
This is Switzerland today. And if you think this is all a bit Orwellian, it pays to remember that the Irish Environmental Protection Agency last year published a report which claimed that the greatest amount of dioxins in our air came about as a result of unregulated domestic fires.
But the Swiss did not arrive at this point easily. Mistakes were made. One such was the burying of hazardous waste within 100 metres of houses occupied by families at Kolliken as recently as the early 1980s.
Dumping of wastes in general, whether domestic or industrial, was a mistake.
Many of the former dumps will require monitoring for generations to come and the contaminated ones will have to be dug up and sent for incineration.
Even in the remedial process, mistakes were made. At some contaminated sites, electrodes were placed in the ground in landfills and a current was passed through these to "vitrify" the waste. This is fine until the gases it caused are taken into account.
The dumping of sludge from waste water treatment plants was another "mistake". As was the wholesale outpouring of waste water from industry into the Rhine and the Swiss lakes. Just 10 to 15 years ago, Lake Leman was a "putrid mess".
In reality, these were not "mistakes" as such in that they were often considered standard practice - the rest of the world was doing similar things in handling its waste.
But for Switzerland, the "water tower of Europe", the problem of pollution affecting rivers such as the Rhine was something which had to be addressed.
This was not just "typical Swiss efficiency" - the international aspect of water was addressed by international commissions involving the French, Germans, Austrians and Italians
Those who operated the Kolliken landfill site - local and canton-level authorities as well as the chemical industry - have stepped forward to claim responsibility.
A national register of polluted sites was established as a first step. Each site was evaluated and, where necessary, remediation will follow the classic pattern of excavation, classification and treatment.
In towns and cities such as Lausanne, on the edge of Lake Leman, to even small Alpine villages, waste water treatment plants extract phosphates. Sludge is now shipped to local incinerators and a programme has been put in place to replace or upgrade the country's incinerators to the latest specifications.
These are costly installations which nobody wanted close to their homes, but they were put in place without recourse to lengthy battles over planning permission or visits to the highest courts in the land.
Householders accept charges for these services - the Swiss currently pay about €450 million (660 million Swiss francs) a year in waste charges - and the charges are largely seen to be fair and to be fairly-applied. Water, for example, is metered and charged for by the cubic metre. A portion of that charge is used to fund the waste water treatment plant. So you pay for what you use.
The Swiss solution would be defeated if a treatment plant was not accepted by the people or if they resorted to burning rubbish in their own fireplaces.
It is a simple, pragmatic and responsible attitude to the management of waste, not necessarily "best practice", but it is current international practice - and it illustrates how far Ireland has yet to travel in this regard.