Sir, – There has been some criticism of Waverley's new recycling regime of late. I suspect this has more to do with politics and personalities than any earnest view on the correct system. According to your report, councillor Dr Marriott seems to suggest that we should spend more on refuse collection – perhaps to get a more frequent service. She intimates that if refuse is only collected once every two weeks then the cost should be halved. It's true that we now seem to have roughly one collection a week against two (actually some households only got a recycling collection every two weeks in the old system). This alternates between straight refuse and a more comprehensive recycling collection. I don't think that costs will have gone down 50 per cent as the more comprehensive recycling scheme would seem to require more handling and differentiated collection rosters compared with simply dumping the whole lot into the back of a dustcart and then dumping it all in a landfill site. If there were to be any saving, I would like to it to be spent on better disposal of batteries and electronics. If the rate of collections for the refuse dump didn't reduce there would be no incentive for people to sort their own waste. I'm sorry that Dr Marriott finds it a burden for the householder to sort the rubbish into the boxes but surely every individual must make some personal contribution in the entire environmental issue. Recycling will make a difference. Two years ago under the misconception that all plastics were already recycled in Hampshire, our household collected plastic waste and smuggled it to collection points across the county border! We soon found that our dustbin was almost a half of its usual size. If the reader is interested, he or she can perform the same experiment. Collect – in plastic bags of course – all plastics for one or two weeks. Collect not only all the bottles, but the trays for meat and fish, the moulded containers for fruit and cakes, the yoghurt pots of every size and shape and the sundry cartons and caskets in which manufacturers find necessary to encapsulate every item. If the householder wants to obtain a reasonable weekly average for his experiment, he can collect over several weeks; but should be careful not to suffocate when doing this. Factor what you have collected by all the households in Waverley and think what that means in landfill requirement. Hitherto plastic has featured very little in recycling policies. This is because recycling targets were measured by weight of material. When you live in an area which is a net importer of waste like Waverley, what is more interesting from the landfill point of view is surely volume. Ideally, packaging should be returnable to the vendor, then we would get some innovative changes further up the supply chain. Waverley and Surrey have some way to go on recycling but the collection of plastic containers is a start. Farnham itself stands to become surrounded by landfill on all sides. Landfill is not inert. Since Surrey still has no policy for batteries and since electronic goods (especially computers and mobile phones) often wind up in landfill, there is a significant amount of toxic substance that will leach into our groundwater. Finally, my recollection of Majorcan waste collection is slightly at odds with Dr Marriot's. Yes collections were more frequent but took place from large bins at communal collection points to which the householder had often to drive. That would hardly seem to save energy or be as convenient as a household collection. N J Slim, Shrubbs Lane, Rowledge