LOTS of families are finding they have to take extra care and trouble to help the necessary drive towards recycling their rubbish wherever possible.

Separating glass, plastic and paper does take more time than just dumping everything in the bin but it must be done because, quite simply, there is not enough room to keep burying refuse on landfill sites.

But when a couple have seven children - five of them teenagers - it is obvious that the amount of rubbish they produce will be considerably more than that of the more usual husband, wife and two children. In the case of Mr John James, that adds up to 15 bin bags of rubbish each week which the council binmen have refused to pick up on their fortnightly collections because they just don't fit into his wheelie-bins and have to be put out beside them.

As the Keep Britain Tidy campaign point out, with a family of nine - all aged over 11 - it doesn't make sense to try to operate a "one size fits all" policy because their needs are obviously three or four times greater than a couple with no children who manage with a single bin.

Flexibility needs to be shown by the council as well as householders to make the recycling system work properly. It has to work to stop us all being buried by rubbish.