Recycling goes too far: Baby Bins

Now city councils have launched an advertising campaign to highlight the problem and to promote greater use of the Baby-Klappe hatches that allow women to drop off their babies to be found and cared for without having to give their names. Posters were being put up in cities and towns across Germany yesterday, urging women to make use of the Baby-Klappe, with the slogan "Before babies land in the rubbish bin . . ."

At least 23 babies have been killed so far this year, many of them beaten to death or strangled by their mothers before being dumped on wasteland and in dustbins.

In the same week Monika K, 26, was arrested on suspicion of throwing her baby out of a ten-storey Hamburg apartment building, wrapped in a plastic shopping bag. She had given birth to him half an hour before, in the bath. A dog found the bag and scratched it open.