ANYONE who remembers the legendary gameshow 3-2-1 will know that hi-tech dustbins are nothing new - where would Ted Rogers have been without his faithful sidekick Dusty Bin?

Now Worcester City council is bringing the concept into the 21st Century with plans to buy 70,000 'intelligent' wheelie bins, equipped with microchips.

But these rubbish receptacles will have a rather more important job to do than old Dusty did.

Because they will take on the task of working out how much households are recycling as part of the council's ongoing efforts to 'slim the bins' of Worcester residents.

If the council decides to go ahead with the scheme, each family will get two wheelie bins, one for recyclable material and the other for rubbish, with the chips telling council data-crunchers how much material is in each.

The bins themselves will cost £1.3m, while the chips will be another £100,000 if the council decides to go ahead with them.

This seems a lot of money, but the council should be praised for its forward thinking.

Putting rubbish or recycling in bags - as residents have to do now - is not ideal, as the bags themselves need to be disposed of, it costs money and time to distribute them, and they can look unsightly.

The chips may seem overly hi-tech, but they will enable the council to accurately target those people still resisting the call to recycle.

If the new bins can get more of us to recycle, they'll be stars every bit as big as Dusty.