SMALL cars, big problem.

Not big in the grand scheme of life, of course. Not even big really for those fined #30 after getting caught parking cars over 3.6 metres in the North Beach small parking scheme.

But big nonetheless for once again showing up a department’s inability to take its people with it, even when trying to do the right thing.

And unless the States learns lessons from minor fiascos such as this, then green ideas will rapidly earn as bad a reputation as health and safety. Once that goodwill is lost, the battle to recycle more, use less energy and pollute less becomes all the harder.

And that is a big deal.

Government can learn, of course. The recycling bins in Christmas 2009 were an embarrassment as car after car turned up brimming with recycling only to find car parks chock-full with bottles and boxes. Many more experiences like that and islanders will wonder why they bother.

This Christmas was much improved. Extra staffing kept on top of a problem that should have been handled right in the first place.

Some long-term damage to the eco-movement was done, however – as it is each month that the glass recycling builds up at Longue Hougue. Hundreds of one-ton bags filled with smashed bottles and jars diligently collected by islanders over months sit there waiting in vain for a buyer.

It’s not environmentally sound, it’s the opposite. It makes people feel fools for making the effort to separate their glass in the first place.

The confetti of parking tickets that engulfed motorists sane enough not to have their car’s precise length memorised down to the last millimetre was an equally dim-witted piece of Big Brother government.

While most people can see the sense of encouraging small cars in a tiny, overcrowded island with narrow roads, few respond well to an approach which smacks of using green ethics to make some cash.

A few litres of paint this weekend may help. What the States – and Environment in particular – should be looking to now is how to take islanders with them on their next green mission.