Dear neighbours...

I took my wee food bin down to the big brown bin to empty it and discovered it was full of - wait for it - cushions. Yes, I know. Very funny. Except that the binmen now refuse to empty that bin - and the additional brown bin the warden asked for a couple of weeks back, which is now full of all sorts of waste that should have been put down the chute or in the bins marked either paper and card, or glass and plastic.

I'm guessing that somebody in the complex - maybe more than one somebody - is taking the piss. Staging a 'dirty protest.' All they're doing is making things difficult for those of us who want to do our wee bit to recycle our household waste. If the issue is cost, I reckon each bio-degradable bin liner costs 10p. I use one a week. In a year, the cost comes to about a fiver. If you can't afford that, the council people say you can wrap your food waste in a couple of sheets of newspaper (which is bio-degradable) instead.

If you're still not happy, phone the council and complain and they'll tell you what I'm now going to tell you.

Get used to recycling. This is how it has to be. Councils are now fined by the government - the one in London - if they don't take action to reduce waste. We are, you see, turning our planet into a giant dump. Have you not seen Wall-E? Do you not notice the plastic crap lying on our beaches? The stuff dumped at the side of our roads? All we're asked to do in our complex is to separate our waste. If we don't, here's what will happen next - and, believe me, this is based on experience:

The two brown bins sitting outside our complex will start to smell. We will complain. The housing association and the council will tell us why they stink and suggest we need to get in an outside contractor - because the council won't touch them - to dispose of the contents of the two brown bins and then clean them. We will have to pay for this. The cost will be added to the monthly charge for services we all have to pay. If you're pissed off at the council now over rubbish collection, how much more annoyed will you be when you have to pay an extra charge because a few eejits have decide to abuse the system?

Most of all I would like to remind you: this is not important. Definitely not important enough for sensible people to bother about. So can we just settle this matter and get on with life?