Not snooping, but educating: An explanatory statement by Councillor Martin Elengorn, Cabinet member for the Environment.

5.35.26pm BST (GMT +0100) Sun 16th Sep 2007

It is simply not true that the Council's new waste advisers are 'snooping' in people's bins to see what they are throwing out, . .

' . . their main function is to encourage residents to recycle effectively. Cllr Marlow has got this wrong. In order to monitor participation in the fairly new food waste scheme our officers may occasionally lift the lid on the special food waste bin to see if it is being used and check material levels. This is very different from "sifting through residents' dustbins". The purpose of our new waste officers is to drive up resident involvement in our recycling programme. We know that no matter what we do or how many trucks we put on the roads the only way to really get our recycling rates to increase is to get more people to work with us. The work our new officers are now doing to inform people and get them working with us promises to make a huge difference to our recycling rates and should see us finally burst through the 40% barrier.