Reducing waste collections to once fortnightly and imposing a charge for green bins makes no sense and points to a lack of insight into a fundamentally flawed system.

Green waste is the one area the council could make profitable by turning waste into useful product, be it garden compost or even methane gas. It is also one which can be readily recycled at home by the public using composters and incineration. So charging for its removal will motivate anyone to deal with their green waste.

Meanwhile, plastic bottles and things that can’t be recycled - and cost the council money to dispose of - will continue to be collected - for free.

Where is the incentive for the public to cut the amount of waste they produce?

There is none.

Suppliers equally have no cost or levy imposed for failing to reduce or use greener (eg bio-degradable) packaging and so will continue to churn out products wrapped in copious amounts of waste.

That said, packing materials have an inherent cost. It is now invisible to the consumer but in tougher times, when the public and business purse was tight, it was reflected in the recompense given for returning bottles and suchlike.

Since then, we have become a society of wasters.

But as stock piles or rubbish pile up, we will wish we hadn’t thrown it all away.

Production and proliferation of plastic needs to be penalised to reflect the insurmountable damage it is causing to our environment and planet.

Not green waste.

Dave Degen

Whippendell Road, Watford