Sir – The simplification of the waste recycling system which Oxford City Council intends to implement, as announced in The Oxford Times (January 14), apparently without any consultation, appears to this correspondent a very dubious improvement.

Essentially it seems that all green boxes will become redundant, as will any blue boxes which are replaced by a second wheelie-bin, also blue. Will all these redundant boxes be recycled, and what is the cost of this part of the exercise alone, one wonders? What of the prospect of two ugly bins in the street instead of one?

To avoid this, perhaps the green box could be used as a blue box overflow.

Anyone who watched on TV the sorry plight in parts of India of the poor, who are forced to recycle by hand on rubbish dumps to make a living, will realise that the essence of recycling is sorting out the waste.

This new scheme suggests that, unlike these deprived souls, we are incapable of dividing up our rubbish, as this is too complicated for us, so we should lump all our recyclable items together and get the council employees to do this vital job instead. Thus more employees will be needed, there will be a higher wage bill, and we know what that means for our council tax bills.

If recycling is important enough to have a meaningful impact on the world climate, let us not be encouraged to be lazy!

It is more important that we should all be familiar with how to sort our waste, than it is to be “increasing our recycling rates” merely to satisfy some Government auditor.

Ken Weavers, Headington