SIR — I was quite upset this week, when my recycling was taken by the Somerset Waste Partnership, to receive a letter stating that my recycling boxes, which are very light, plastic and have handles, are unsuitable for the purpose of collection, and that they posed a health and safety risk to the men that collect the recycling.
A couple of years ago when I decided that my wife and I would fully commit to the recycling, we purchased boxes from the council only to have them removed without permission from the pavement outside of our property.
So we quickly purchased alternative, what we believe to be suitable containers, again as the council-provided ones are quite expensive to have removed without permission.
Now we are being asked to purchase the council containers again in order for SWP "to be able to continue picking up our recycling".
In other words, if we do not purchase "their" containers, they will not pick up our recycling.
I go to many homes around the South West where the council provide all the containers free of charge for recycling, including wheelie bins for general waste and bins for food waste, yet our local council provides us with nothing but threats of no collection if we do not purchase its containers.
I have to admit I find the separation and collecting of the different recyclables quite tedious at times, especially in the winter. It takes effort to do this and the easy option would be to not bother.
My wife and I pay almost the top council tax rates, we contribute a great deal of money to the council-provided facilities in Minehead that we do not enjoy the benefits of, yet we are not even provided with the containers to enable us to do our little bit towards saving the planet.
Why can't the council provide these containers for us if it is so concerned about the health and safey of its workmen?
It seems to me now that we are being dominated by the literal way in which health and safety is being read.
I guess the next thing will be that we have to load our own recyclables into the lorry. Oops - that would not work as we would be the health and safety risk then.
I have two weeks now to decide if I want to purchase these new containers from the council or suffer the consequences of having to take my stuff to the recycle centre.
Perhaps re-cycling is not for me!
I would be interested to learn how many others have been told that their containers do not meet the stringent health and safety codes of the SWP.
Adrian Bulpin,
Lower Park,
Minehead.