SIR - As the faithful city embraces its new green credentials, Warndon mum Lisa Buzza found out recently that it can prove expensive.

Your front page story (Worcester News, April 3) about her £100 fine for not using the wheelie bins has some worrying aspects.

Firstly, she did make some effort to bag up and leave her refuse for collection and on the basis that the wheelie bins had recently been destroyed, it might have been better for the council to give her the benefit of the doubt rather than using the law.

But what a state of affairs that it involved officials rifling through the bin bag for evidence. The woman surely has enough on her plate with vandals destroying her bin, not to mention being pregnant and having a heart condition.

Now she has to produce the cash fast or it potentially rises to a thousand pounds.

Doesn't it all feel very oppressive? It's bad enough that the refuse collection is now once fortnightly and that people have been lumbered with these huge ugly wheelie receptacles, that blow over in a strong wind and are very unfriendly for elderly and disabled residents to wrestle with.

It also slows up the collection of rubbish. Lorries made progress far faster when the bags were being thrown into it rather than the convoluted lift and tip mechanism now engaged.

The principle is fine, the methods of this new recycling culture is not well thought through.

To be fined for the most modest transgression smacks of bureaucratic zeal rather than common sense. And the amount isn't small change either. People are fined only £60 for using a mobile phone while driving and that is something with real implications for public safety.

Hopefully someone might decide to waive the fine.

Andrew Brown, Worcester.