Once upon a time, many years ago, every household was issued with a green garden waste bin, we weren’t asked if we wanted or needed one, they were just delivered to us free of charge.

Then some bright spark thought, hey, we can make some extra money here by charging £30 per household to keep their bins.

Even more if they want to buy the compost, they’ve contributed to the making of, that will be another £2 please.

It will still leave plenty for the council to use.

And so the recycling began, making Gloucestershire among the best counties at recycling.

Now they are proposing to cut our Green Garden Waste Bin Collection to every fortnight and no collections at all through the winter.

During the summer, mine and the majority of other people’s bins are full (to the top but still able to close the lid, health and safety) with grass cuttings, hedge cuttings, weeds etc, if it’s cut to a fortnightly collection we will have no choice but to put second weeks garden waste into carrier bags into the black bin, which will be then sent to the landfill, what is the point of that.

They say the food waste will still be collected weekly, in the same big vehicles, driving the same routes, presumably collecting the Green Garden Waste Bins from cemeteries, so where are they going to save any money.

We don’t pay our yearly fee of £30 for the fun of it, we pay it to use the facilities because we have a need of it.

If these proposals go ahead, with having no collections through the winter, I would expect our yearly fee to be £0, or at the most £10, due to the fact that we would have approx 16 collections per year.

Mrs Val Fletcher

Cirencester