Sir – Recycling in Witney has become a total nightmare.

The bins are always left in a mess on the road to get run over, but really that’s the least of our worries.

We get a no fly-aways sticker most weeks. One time it was stuck to a piece of plastic bubble wrap about three metres square. It was not a windy day and I tried getting it out and encouraging it to blow down the street. It would not move an inch.

Another time, in an effort to get our recycling taken, I started bagging it all up into type as requested. Imagine my dismay to find some bag contents emptied back into the boxes and given a no fly-aways label.

These are just two examples. Every week, we make the effort and wonder why we bother. It’s clearly become a game for the crew.

As a family of four and three cats, we struggle with the size of the landfill bin and do not have space for randomly-refused recycling. It was wrong of the council to change the bin to a smaller one and reduce the collection to two-weekly. It needed to be one or the other.

There wasn’t an extra collection over Christmas, which left the streets with overflowing bins and us pulling our hair out, not knowing what to do with it all.

The food waste bin became unusable last summer when we got infested with ants and just gave up on it as a disgusting mess.

It has got to the stage where it is actually impacting on our daily lives: it’s a stress and a hassle.

The whole system is unjust. Many of our neighbours have no struggle at all, as they are just couples with no children, yet they get the same size bin. I have observed other families with the garden waste bin in use for landfill.

I dream of the days when you just put a bin out and it went.

We are not binmen. We pay our taxes for this service and it is in urgent need of an overhaul.

Fay Spencer, Burwell Meadow, Witney