It is the middle of August so "news" may be thin on the ground but the subject of Monday's front page and editorial comment (The Argus, August 15) is not news at all to those of us who have to live with a poor household waste collection service.

Today is collection day on this street and I have just arrived home to find confirmation that the men have been.

Lying on the pavement and the foot of the steps to my home is the usual assortment: A child's electric toothbrush, a used nappy, wet wipes, food packaging, vegetable peelings and other household detritus.

Unusually, there don't appear to be any tampon applicators on this occasion.

Every time this chronic issue is raised publicly in our city, we get the same old guff about seagulls and warm weather.

Your editorial runs true to form. Believe it or not, warm weather and seagulls are not peculiar to Brighton. Nor are pigeons, foxes, cats, flies or rats, nor indeed any other sort of delinquent animals.

What does seem a little unusual, however, is the only-too-frequently observable behaviour of some of our bin crews, which may differentiate them from their counterparts elsewhere.

Of particular note is the practice of throwing black bags of waste down flights of steps or grass banks to the road below.

Sometimes, bags that receive this treatment disobligingly spill their contents. And there they stay, until a good fairy clears them up or they are dissipated by the elements.

The waste collection authority could make significant inroads to tackling this problem not only by supervising the bin crews more thoroughly but by more radical steps to raise our waste awareness.

If food and kitchen waste - 17 per cent of household waste - were collected separately, using suitable containers, as many types of dry recyclables are currently, the attraction of bin bags to seagulls and their friends would be largely eliminated.

If the putrescible fraction of household waste was collected separately, reliably and regularly, the residual fraction, which does not rot and attract vermin, could be collected less frequently - perhaps every two weeks.

The managers of Cityclean are waste management professionals and will be as aware of the options as anyone is but until they know the outcomes of the draft waste local plan public consultation and the Hollingdean depot and Newhaven North Quay planning applications, we can probably expect things to muddle along much as hitherto.

-John Horsfield, Lower Bevendean