AN ECO-CRUSADER from York was threatened with court action after taking rubbish bags from outside a bank - to recycle their contents.

John Cossham, of Hull Road, was sent the reprimand by City of York Council waste chiefs after rifling through rubbish he picked up outside the LloydsTSB branch, in Pavement.

He said he wanted to find out how much unnecessary waste was produced by the company.

He said: "I am a keen recycler and I am always on a quest to see whether you can recycle more and to encourage individuals and businesses to recycle.

"I took them home because I wanted to know what they were throwing away and what they were recycling.

"There were glass bottles, aluminium cans, plastic cups and paper. I then weighed the waste and sent a letter of complaint to LloydsTSB.

"I also sent a copy of the letter to the council because I thought they ought to know.

"But the council have written back to me saying: thank you for sharing your correspondence, but you should be aware that you could have committed an offence'."

Mr Cossham founded the local environmental composting group York Rotters in 2004 and was last year shortlisted for the Volunteer Of The Year title in The Press's York Community Pride Awards.

A spokeswoman for City of York Council said: "We felt it was the council's duty to remind Mr Cossham that, whilst we appreciate his good intentions, it is an offence to remove rubbish that has been put outside a property for collection.

"This is because, until it has been collected, rubbish remains the property of whoever has left it out for collection.

"There could also be data protection issues with someone going through people's rubbish in this way."

A spokeswoman for LloydsTSB defended its record, saying the firm already recycles half its waste.

She said: "We are committed to minimising the amount of waste we produce and to increasing the amount we recycle.

"Although we are always looking at ways to increase the amount of recycling we do, it can be difficult for individual branches to recycle all of their waste because the volumes they produce are relatively small.

"For example, our larger offices have an arrangement with a recycling company to pick up waste plastic cups, but the volumes produced at many branches are too small for us to be able to set up such arrangements."