Apart from the appointment three years ago of the new chief executive of Brighton and Hove City Council, the next best investment the council made, according to council spokesman Tim Moore, was the introduction of wheelie-bins for refuse collection (The Argus, August 31).

The benefits were enormous. Notably, dustcart crews would no longer need to run the risk of getting pricked by sharp objects when picking up bags of rubbish and overall the introduction of these bins would speed up collection and be labour-saving.

Like a lot of people, I doubted the wisdom of wheelie bins in some areas but assumed whoever dreamed up the idea must know what they were doing and that they had an ace or two up their sleeve for manoeuvring bins up the equivalent of the side of Devil's Dyke.

I thought, for instance, that perhaps they had employed Geoff Capes to haul about 30 loaded wheelie-bins down the eight-metre steep bank in Drove Crescent, Portslade, to the waiting dustcart below and Kelly Holmes to race back up with them.

Out of curiosity, on collection day I followed the dustcart and found, not surprisingly, crews operating in Drove Crescent having to delve in to wheelie-bins with their hands to retrieve rubbish bags, throwing them into a larger bin to be transported to the dustcart waiting in the road, eight metres below the bank.

In other areas I noted crews, realising it was far quicker and easier to empty wheelie-bins by hand, were sensibly doing so.

Perhaps the council should appoint one of the crew I saw operating sensibly as the new head of operations at Cityclean.

-Dave Bonwick, Stonery Road, Portslade