I support recycling and agree we should do more. Other councils have managed to increase recycling without reducing the weekly household waste collection.

City of York Council's badly formulated strategy does not deliver a vehicle for increasing recycling as there is no provision for the kerbside recycling of cardboard and plastics, the main bin fillers.

The council's waste strategy unit says: "Europe has set the country targets to reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste being sent to landfill."

So why reduce the grey bin collections by half if it is only biodegradable waste they want to reduce? Does the council think we are not capable of using the green bin without being forced to?

Its web site states: "About a third of the average contents of a household rubbish bin is made up of garden waste."

On this pretext, the council has withdrawn 50 per cent of the grey bin collections and supplied a green bin for garden rubbish to compensate.

Yet elsewhere on the waste strategy website the council's own detailed statistics show that this third is 32 per cent and is made up of kitchen and garden rubbish - yet we can not use the green bin for kitchen rubbish!

The maths does not add up. Going with the council's figures, the average household rubbish bin is more likely to contain only 15 per cent garden waste not a third, yet it has reduced refuse collection by 50 per cent.

Why else slash the grey bin collections several months before kerbside recycling of cardboard and plastics has been implemented and before facilities for people who require a weekly bin collection on medical grounds is in place?

It's like jumping out of a plane before your parachute has been put on.

Paul Hodgson,

North Lane, Wheldrake.

Updated: 10:46 Monday, October 17, 2005