"Why do I bother to recycle?"

The questioner says: " I go to trouble of putting paper in green box, and plastic and tins in black box only to see refuse collectors empty both into same wheelie bin."

The leader says: "When materials have to be collected 'co-mingled' they are separated at the materials recycling facility at Pebsham.

"Materials are occasionally or regularly collected co-mingled for a variety of reasons.

"This could be because there was a dual-bodied vehicle breakdown so a replacement single body vehicle was used that week or that the larger dual bodied vehicle cannot gain access to your property because you live along a narrow access road or that there were issues that day or week with the usual disposal route for cans, plastics or paper.

"Generally materials are collected separately because they are then transported to different places for disposal. To Pebsham for cans and plastics and to Westham for paper. If Westham does not have capacity to take all of our paper then it goes to Pebsham with the cans and plastics where the county disposal operator separates it into the various materials streams they can handle.

"You may note that some of the other district and borough councils in East Sussex have chosen to collect all recycling materials in one container so that it all goes through the county disposal contract.

"Others, like Rother have chosen to separate paper as we believe that greater recycling benefit is gained from alternate disposal route via Westham."