With reference to your article re Bin or bag. 1. This is just a way of controlling the amount of refuse each house can put out for collection. 2. Will the Council s collection vehicle wash the inside of these wheelie bins as they are being emptied or are

With reference to your article re Bin or bag.

1. This is just a way of controlling the amount of refuse each house can put out for collection.

2. Will the Council's collection vehicle wash the inside of these wheelie bins as they are being emptied or are we expected to put the refuse in black sacks first.

3. Where are we supposed to keep these and other bins and containers when gardens are small. We already store garden waste, glass, newspaper and tins. How long before another container arrives for plastic bottles or supermarket wrapping?

4. The medically unfit would be unable to move a heavy wheelie bin over flat ground, let alone grass or gravel, beside being unable to clean the inside.

5. If the householder had to wash it out after emptying, where would you wash it out and dispose of the left-overs.

MICHAEL MERSON

* I for one do not want a wheelie bin. Where are we supposed to keep it?

We already have a brown wheelie bin stuck out the front of our house, how many more are we supposed to have?

It will make each house look like the council tip. If we keep them in the back garden will the council pay for new UPVC door frames every time the threshold breaks through wheeling these bins in and out every week. I do not think so. Also if kept out the front they are a nice target for vandals, just imagine the mess, if vandals strike the night before collection day.

PETER JERMAIN

* Yet again the debate arises in Stevenage of wheelie bin v bin bags. I would like to make the following comments.

Presumably those who now wish for wheelie bins have somewhere convenient and unobtrusive to store them; are close to the roadside where they may need to leave them when full and retrieve them when empty: do not need to pull them along some lengthy footpath and have no steps to negotiate to their house. Many new town houses do not have such convenient features, and for many, in particular the elderly and disabled, part full bin bags are more manageable than a dustbin on wheels. Many houses simply do not have the space to keep a wheelie bin in addition to the existing garden waste wheelie bin, current recycling boxes and those proposed for the future.

In use, I wonder if it has been appreciated by the proponents of wheelie bins that unless food remains air bagged before binning, or a wheelie liner is installed, or the bin is cleaned regularly by the user, or by some paid-for contractor, the bin will become a very unhygienic and unpleasant container. Not a problem with bin bags.

Wheelie bin collection is much slower, and traffic obstructing than bin bag collection, as anyone observing a wheelie bin collection vehicle will know.

Some of the bin bag problems could be reduced if householders tied up their bags securely and put them out at the appropriate time. No doubt the collection operators could be more helpful when bags have been broken by cats or dogs and probably the council could react more promptly when spilled rubbish is reported.

Finally, do those who are satisfied with the bin bag system, most probably the majority of residents, wish to pay the inevitable substantial increase in council tax for the cost of installing and subsequently monitoring a more costly, and for many a more inconvenient rubbish collection system. Costs which will far outweigh any savings.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

* I have been a Stevenage resident for 40 years. There is nothing wrong with the black bag if used correctly, it is the people who misuse them who are to blame. Put them out at the right time and tie them down, then they are quite OK.

R G M CATTRELL, STEVENAGE