Cory Environmental has just delivered my fetchingly coloured six-monthly complement of pink, black and white plastic bags, minus one of the usual two rolls of black bags. This along with a leaflet explaining why a solitary roll of 13 black bags is deemed sufficient for 26 weeks of non-recyclable rubbish, because Southend residents are recycling more than 45 per cent of their household waste, while 45 pink bags are deemed necessary for the same period.

It made no mention of what even an assiduous recycler such as myself is going to do with such a preponderance of pink bags, other than to use them when the black ones inevitably run out.

If 45 bags represent, by Cory’s own estimation, almost half a resident’s recyclable rubbish over whatever period, surely they should come with at least double that number of black bags where no food waste container is supplied.

And I do not get supplied with a food waste container.

Is 13 unlucky or unlikely here when Southend Council is so loudly and proudly committed to a weekly waste collection, come what may?

John Haran
Broadway West
Leigh