After writing about the new waste and recycling arrangement twice recently, it was not my intention to revisit the subject. However, the letter in last week’s paper [BFP, November 8] from ‘Chiltern and Wycombe District Council’s Joint Waste Team’ publicly inviting me to spend a day with the collection team misses my point so completely that I must respond.

I do not doubt that the nine men who now collect my rubbish are working their socks off to fulfil the requirements of the new system. I do not need to watch them in action to know that.

As always, it is the guys on the sharp end that have to make new systems work. To tell me that they are all “dedicated, conscientious workers doing their level best under challenging circumstances” implies that I thought otherwise. But it is the “challenging circumstances” I was highlighting and not the prodigious efforts of the foot-soldiers who are always unjustly in the firing line.

I spoke to a team in the street in Wycombe the other day and they left me very aware that in their opinion the wheel has been reinvented unnecessarily. I asked whether the men who do the job every day had been widely consulted on how to do that job better. You can guess the answer. Understanding the system may not, as the team aver, have presented the majority with difficulties, but the sizeable minority that are struggling should not be dismissed.

The sole difference between the old system and the new one for us is that I no longer have to take my bottles to the local recycling hopper. So, it takes all those extra men and lorry miles to recycle my bottles. And it is only cheaper to the taxpayer because the new company is charging the councils less than the old one to do it. Whether they can sustain that is something we will find out in time. The company’s record elsewhere does not inspire this taxpayer with confidence.

As I drive around the district, all I seem to see are bins of varying colours all along the pavements, as so many householders simply don’t have room to accommodate them anywhere else.

For the avoidance of any doubt, the workers who have to operate this system have my complete and unhesitating support. I hope their employers will give them opportunity to give proper feedback anonymously, so that job security is not an issue.