THE rubbish recycling mania that East Lancashire councils have become obsessed by in order to escape landfill taxes of £14 per tonne has churned up the inevitable -- dustbin cops to make sure you vill sort der refuse as der council orders.

These rubbish inspectors are going around advising householders in Blackburn with Darwen how to pack their bins properly.

Fine. Crush your empty containers, folks, and your grouses about the new system and about your wheelie bin filling up long before your new fortnightly collection is due may condense accordingly.

Or perhaps not, as this is not simply a question of cramming stuff in and sorting it into different containers so that waste that can be recycled is separated from that which cannot.

For, already we have -- as was predicted -- complaints about hygiene hazards resulting from the scrapping of the old weekly collections of all refuse and the switch to alternate fortnightly collections of recyclable rubbish and non-recyclable waste.

In particular, of people's bins being full of maggots. What's good or green about breeding germ-carrying blue-bottles? And who wants the stench of rotting food at their back door for 14 whole days?

The fact is, that all this pious recycling propaganda that's being poured out is less to do with saving the country from being buried under a mountain of rubbish, than with saving councils money -- and that's no reason why households should have their own environments polluted by putrefying, stinking disease-carrying waste.

And, above all, when a heat wave gives a decidedly unfresh meaning to the the expression "high summer."

Common sense and safe practice say bins should be emptied weekly, as before.