Cllr Kevin Lake, of Exminster, Teignbridge Council environment spokesman, writes:

I object to Cllr Gordon Hook's doom and gloom synopsis of the recent fall in Teignbridge Council's recycling rate, as was mirrored across Devon incidently, with Teignbridge's to a lesser degree.

He belittles the extremely hard work of the department he once represented and is aware of the intervention to help the flood victims, particularly in Kennford, Ashburton and many other areas.?It resulted in an expected increase in landfill where we helped hard-pressed house owners offload their flood ruined contents free.

This has an inevitable counterbalancing negative effect on the overall recycling rate during this period; until then it had risen to 56 per cent and we are pushing with our own inhouse advertising campaign towards the 60 per cent target we aspire to. We are far from complacent, as he insinuates.

He neglects to mention we are in the grip of a long recession in which people are cutting back on purchasing newspapers, plastics etc, which are affecting the figures. The companies paying for the products are paying less to preserve their costs. There is no evidence recyclables are being put into landfill.

He mentions incinerators in a bad light; Exeter's example indicates a local waste to heat plant which surely is an environmentally friendly way forward. Both Exeter and Plymouth's incinerators will result in less carbon being emitted by Teignbridge refuse lorries by offloading in both directions at shorter distances and by using DCC's planned intermediate transfer stations.

This will also result in this authority being able to purchase cheaper refuse lorries as a result of the terrain in the future.

The refuse department at Teignbridge Council is efficiently well led; its employees are outstanding and its operating costs to the council tax payer are among the lowest nationally, certainly in Devon – another fact he decides to omit.

Let's stop playing cheap political football with waste and recycling and, with DCC, strive forward to increase recycling while keeping the burden on the hard-pressed tax payer as low as possible.MORE LETTERS IN OUR DIGITAL EDITION