It will not have escaped your attention that environmental issues have forced their way to the top of the government and media agenda. Not least because they have featured reasonably heavily in FPJ’s pages over the last few weeks.

This week, Ben Bradshaw’s implied criticism of the UK supermarkets for the speed of their progress towards recycling targets garnered a lot of coverage for the minister and his party.

As always, the supermarkets responded with their own brand of platitudes and well-honed, but barely disguised to the unknowing, buck-passing manoeuvres.

I heard representatives of two of the major retailers interviewed on radio. Both extolled his own employer’s green virtues and underlined the depth of its commitment to the cause of reducing packaging passing through stores. Both then followed this with the astonishingly arrogant, but unfortunately oh-so accurate “we are challenging our suppliers to achieve this for us.”

Who exactly asked for the mountain of packaging in the first place? Suppliers around the world have not been queuing up to make their lives more complex and more costly, as the costs of new packaging are passed their way.

The supermarkets are undoubtedly committed to becoming more “green”. But suppliers should not be scapegoats as self-protective customers deflect public ire into their path.