Adam Trimingham wrote an absolutely brilliant full-page deconstruction and justification for wheelie bins and recycling boxes (The Argus, April 6). The council should post re-prints to every person it wants to wheelie bin to madness.

Doing so would at least help explain why we think these bins are necessary.

It is not working out well, however. And residents are not to blame.

Here in Clarendon Road, as soon as the terraced houses got the black boxes, the bushes and trees opposite, which border the street in front of the five blocks of high-rise flats, got plastic bags in their branches and cardboard round their roots.

You can't tell the wind to stop blowing because the bin men are due to come along. The empties then blow about, too.

It is dangerous for these lids and boxes to obstruct traffic and one of my caretakers recently had to drag one of the boxes out of one of the high-rise rubbish chutes. Total madness, but then life is mad now.

On the corners of Ellen Street and Ethel Street, behind these five blocks of flats, are two public recycling points for cardboard, tins, paper, glass and shoes. One of my caretakers cynically reckons I'm the only resident here who uses them.

Adam's article pointed out that the wheelie bins were meant to encourage recycling.

I would go further, I would abolish the word recycling altogether - it's not helping.

It is clear from the escalating distress (The Argus, June 1) the solution is contrived and wrong-headed.

Amsterdam apparently collects furniture and similar large objects once a week on a specified day from kerbsides. At least this would stop flytipping.

When I was growing up, bottles were returned to supermarkets for small amounts of cash.

How did things work 100 years ago? Recycling did not exist then as everone was too busy working. How did we become so childlike, passively helpless and dependent on others to take all the rubbish away?

Wheelie bins and black boxes are a shock and visually disgusting.

How do we organise waste-free shopping - that is the true challenge.

-Valerie Paynter, Hove