WELL said David Pearcy ("Bin It! ill-judged", Letters, October 11).

We have become a nation which now squanders the earth's resources and we certainly do need to be more responsible about what we use and how we re-use. The council is doing just this in encouraging us to recycle and we ought to support its efforts.

As for the grey bins, for a family of four, after one week of carefully monitoring our kitchen waste bin, I have successfully reduced the amount of waste going to landfill not only in quantity but also by the amount of space it uses in the bin itself.

There will be enough room in the grey bin for two weeks' waste. Apart from plastic bottles which can be washed and squashed for recycling, the other plastics can be saved and then stacked and packed to reduce the amount of space they need in the bin, and therefore the landfill.

Great to hear that the council will be arranging for plastics to be collected in the new year but I hope this includes more than just bottles.

As for cardboard, containers of any size can be taken apart quite quickly and flattened. These can then be taken to the tip or, if necessary, take up less space in the bin.

This is not an onerous task; just one which requires a mindset of thinking more of the world and its future than our immediate gratification with its produce.

I suggest people let their supermarket know how dissatisfied they are with the over-packaging of products. Write to them, phone them, e-mail them and demand a reply: hopefully they will be "encouraged" to alter their methods of packaging.

Susan McDonough,

Stockton Lane, York.

Updated: 10:45 Monday, October 17, 2005