LIKE reader Jean Hields (Letters, August 29), we have had similar problems with the city council's recycling team. On August 2, my wife and daughter both saw the recycling team emptying our blue recycling box into our just-emptied grey wheelie bin.

I phoned the council's cleansing department to tell them what had happened. I was told this should not occur and she would inform her bosses. That was the third time I had to phone the council last month, all in connection with our recycling box.

The first time I had to complain about my recycling box not being emptied. I was told the recycling team could not come out just to empty one recycling bin. The young woman told me to empty our recycling box into a bin bag and leave it untied so the recycling team could see it contained only recyclable items and to put it out with the next week's rubbish collection.

This I did, and was astonished that someone on the recycling team picked up the bin bag, walked round my car and deposited it on my garden instead of recycling its contents. I picked it up and put it out with the following week's rubbish only to see it put into our grey wheelie bin instead of being recycled.

Our recycling box is overflowing every week so goodness knows what it will be like every two weeks.

Thomas Burke,

Collingwood Avenue,

Holgate, York.

Updated: 09:46 Friday, September 02, 2005