I’VE recently received my fourth different-coloured bin from Renfrewshire Council and instructions on how to fill it. The long-term aim is obviously to cut down on pollution by reducing energy consumption. I’m all for this but has the council really thought things through? Its instructions are to clean out bottles and plastic containers before binning them. To do this effectively requires hot water which means using energy thus adding to pollution.

Another instruction is not to put textiles and old shoes in any of the bins so it would appear that I’m to drive to my local recycling centre to drop them off, thus consuming petrol and again adding to pollution. Is it only a matter of time before we receive another coloured bin for the likes of shoes and clothing?

Alan McGibbon,

Corsebar Road, Paisley.

I NOTE your article on the amount of waste being sent to landfill ("One million tonnes of waste still being sent to landfill", The Herald, December 8).

The problems of non-biodegradable waste have been known for at least 45 years, and probably longer.

In 1995 I set up an environmental information service to inform people what waste is, how it is produced, and how to deal with it on an individual level. I approached the Environmental Management Department of the Town Council in the area I lived, to ask what measures it was taking to encourage recycling, and reducing the production of household waste. The answer was "none". Until the European Union forced through measures, nobody in Britain (except perhaps David Attenborough) gave it a thought.

The RSPB has recently started sending out its magazine in a compostable envelope. It is looking for praise for their "forwar- thinking" action. Why should we praise it? It has known for at least 20 years that it should not have been sending plastic in the mail. I, and too many others too numerous to mention, have been telling it to stop using plastic. It wouldn't listen because it has been too interested in marketing gewgaws in its shops. Now that it has helped to get us to the stage of plastic being deep in the gut of every living creature, including us humans, it wants us to say how clever it is.

Margaret Forbes,

Corlic Way, Kilmacolm.