Councillors and officers of the Forest of Dean need to be congratulated for a sight now all too common in the Forest's winding lanes: Green bins have replaced milk churns in our green and pleasant land. The harvest is even more bountiful, over 8,000 tonnes of it every year. Even Defra agreed in a 2006 report that 'the total quantity of waste arising has risen from 29,056 tonnes in 2002/03 to 36,249 tonnes in 2004/05, equivalent to 25 per cent over the two years. This increase could be due to the introduction of collection of garden waste that had not been previously collected.'

I am sure Forest residents consider this good value for their money, presently a mere £600,000 a year to collect and £200,000 to compost at a central location. That composting charges will double to over £400,000 when combined food and green waste collection is started in the not too distant future is small beer for the prosperous residents of the Forest of Dean, ever ready to keep their lawns, and hedges trimmed and trees lopped to perfection.

A million pounds for keeping the Forest green is a small price to pay for a little luxury that brightens the economic doom and gloom. It also generates employment and economic activity. We can do without some other council services of course, bring in additional charges for services, or increase council tax, or some other clever initiative to fill the council's budget black hole.

We cannot but fail to take pride that our total waste collection costs of £2.5M is twice that for similar sized councils and one of the highest in England. We have also boosted our poor recycling figure of 14 per cent to over 35 per cent by this simple slight of the green-bin. It all goes for good PR for the Forest of Dean, don't you agree?

For those environmental-nutters who claim composting at home costs nothing and is less polluting by avoiding the 50kg or so of carbon dioxide per tonne of green waste collected, transported and composted centrally, what is a few hundred extra tonnes of carbon dioxide, if you get free green waste collection throughout the year even in the autumn and winter months when you don't really need it and have to find other stuff to fill the bins. The council of course has a budget of several thousands to reduce its carbon footprint, so that should even out the damage.

A song from the musical 'South Pacific' comes to mind: 'If you don't dream, how can you make your dreams come true?' My dream is that every householder in the Forest gets an additional green bin, maybe two more for houses in the rural lanes, which produce more of the green stuff. so we can increase our recycling – no composting tonnages even more in the coming years. – Venk Shenoi, district councillor, Church­am and Huntley.