going green as if it was 1993

I don't want to engage in any flag waving, but I need to get rid of this rant before the year is out, so here it goes:

We moved from Germany to the UK in 1993, and with all the "going green" discussion happening here in the UK now in 2008, it has struck us that the state of progress on green awareness here and now is very much like Germany 1993. Councils collecting plastic for recycling, shops offering multi-use cloth bags to buy instead of handing out plastic bags automatically, occasional appearance of solar panels on private houses, acknowledgement of green issues by leading politicians, all these things have only become noticable here in the last months, and all of these happened in Germany before we moved away in May 1993.

So I now declare the UK to be 15 years behind on green issues, and if any politician here claims leadership in this field again I'll knock him over the head with a solar panel ... just kidding. Rant over now.