SO the good folk of Witchford are top dogs when it comes to recycling. Apparently, they put out less rubbish than anyone else in the East Cambs district. Well done them. There could be two reasons for this, of course. Firstly the council has decided to s

SO the good folk of Witchford are top dogs when it comes to recycling. Apparently, they put out less rubbish than anyone else in the East Cambs district. Well done them.

There could be two reasons for this, of course. Firstly the council has decided to scrap half of their black bag collections and only take the rubbish away every other week. When the weather is hot and sticky, a fortnight's rubbish steaming and stinking is the last thing you want in your garden, especially when the foxes and rats find it so you will get rid of it elsewhere. Secondly, with the council dump just round the corner in Grunty Fen, it's not a major trek for Witchford people to get rid of their rubbish. If the service is halved in places like Oxlode and Upware it could be a different story. With no dump close at hand, rubbish will have to accumulate.

Another rubbish problem surfaced last week. One of my neighbours is blessed with a fairly large garden and decided to get it tidied up for the winter. He set himself up with 10 paper sacks at the cost of £5 and set to work. The tidying was so effective that he managed to fill all 10 sacks and a couple more. Come recycling day the sacks were taken but he only received 10 back. The reason was explained in a leaflet that was stuck through his door: 'due to excessive amounts of bags being handed out, the district council will ONLY replace up to a maximum 10 sacks'.

Now there's a novel policy. The more you recycle, the more it costs you (at 50p a sack). My neighbour wasn't too taken with this situation so he called the helpline. The reason nobody knew about this policy was because leaflets would have been too expensive.

They could have stamped the brown sacks, of course, but keeping us in the dark appears to be easier. Soon after his call to the helpline, the recycler received a phone call saying that the policy was being scrapped and he would be sent two more sacks. It makes you wonder, doesn't it?