People tend to be creatures of habit, and asking for change is no easy task.

Asking them to turn their lives upside down in the face of an unseen villain is harder still.

The challenges are numerous: the existence of the villain – climate change – must be taken on trust from distant men in white coats; the changes involve sacrifice of the luxuries we have grown up with; and the words and ideas involved can be deeply unattractive, such as sustainability or renewable.

But somewhere among it all an unlikely champion has emerged. Recycling, the slightly grubby art of separating our rubbish for re-use, has become the armchair environmentalists’ darling, a byword for “I’m doing my bit”.

In 2007, Ipsos-MORI published a report on social attitudes to climate change showing the number one action people were choosing to take on environmental issues was recycling, noting that it had become little more than a token gesture.

Last year, one green PR company insisted climate change was no longer a scientists’ problem but was something for salesman to sell to a cynical public. So has recycling been the recipient of the best public relations action ever seen?

Simon Bottrell runs ethical communications agency 7 Creative in Brighton. He says: “It’s just easy.

It’s not really to do with the communication at all. It doesn’t feel like a big change and human nature in general resists change, or at least that’s the condition we’ve got into in our comfy society. It’s not so different that people are scared of it. All you’re doing is putting rubbish in a box rather than a bin. And the fact someone, in this case the local council, is helping you do it means it’s easy to adopt.”

Despite it being the one message that has been universally adopted, it has still taken Brighton and Hove the best part of ten years to recycle just 30% of its rubbish, which suggests the rate of change is worryingly slow.

Simon says: “In this area, communication follows policy. If you want to increase the rate of uptake in terms of people not putting recyclables in waste full stop, maybe it’s time we start communicating it more forcibly. Now most people ‘get it’ we can stop being so soft.

You talk about it being a salesman’s problem and that’s the salesman’s argument. It’s no longer just a nice green thing to do, it’s a necessity. If we keep using stuff and putting it in the ground we’re going to run out of stuff.”

George Marshal of the Climate Outreach Information Network says recycling has become a fetishised activity, one we do to displace facing up to the bigger, more immediate problems.

But you can’t climb all the rungs in a ladder in one go and recycling is the most simple step in a hugely complex journey.

Simon says: “People who get defensive when they say they’re doing their bit by recycling are admitting they know they can do better on other fronts. They’re covering up that they haven’t thought about changing their travel plans or energy use or consumerism.

But if recycling has been the trigger for that, then that is a good thing.”