SIR,

Whither goes our waste? A great deal of effort and time is devoted to sorting domestic waste so that it complies with Monmouthshire County Council's (MCC) dictat on recycling domestic rubbish.

I have no trouble with this at all – at least in principle. However, waste management beyond our respective drives and garden gates is another matter.

Metal and plastic items scrupulously separated from cardboard and paper and bagged appropriately are loaded into a single mobile compactor that inevitably destroys the integrity of the red and purple bags so that the end result is a mixture of waste types.

This begs two questions:

Firstly, is this method of waste collection merely a PR exercise and a way for MCC to complete the statistics related to the weight of separated material collected at the door step?

Secondly, if separated waste collection is a legitimate process, yielding economic and environmental benefits, then why mix the waste after it has already been separated only to have it separated yet again by whoever processes it?

Similarly, green waste is being mixed with cooked food waste by the collectors – again, why have we been told to separate it into our brown bags and blue bins?

Elsewhere in the country I have seen suitably designed vehicles used where sorted waste is deposited in separate containers, reducing the need and the associated expense of at least an initial sorting process.

Residents can clearly see that the recycling process is being given real gravity by their local authorities.

I have a lingering suspicion, perhaps misplaced, that what we are told is happening is not in fact what is actually happening to our domestic rubbish.

Mike Hallett

(Monmouth)