DEVON County Council want our views on how to reduce our waste management budget (headline story, November 14). It's simple, restore recycling centre totters!

Totters don't need anyone to pay them a wage. Totters earn their living through rescuing multitudes of items destined for landfill which are then resold, that is the incentive.

A practice standing the test of time, and up until last year (before the French company Sita was given the contract to manage our recycling centres) was working perfectly well in Devon. Totters were doing a damn good job of keeping recycling rates up, the incentive was there. Now Sita has introduced paid employees on minimum wage and we also have the ridiculous scenario of 'throw it over the top' skips. No access allowed, therefore no retrieval.

Meaning perfectly usable household items are been carted off to landfill, at cost not only to the environment but now it seems the taxpayer.

You want to save money? then give management control back to local totters who's business it is to know what can be recycled, not big companies who outbid the small local teams and fail to deliver. One man's trash is another man's treasure — and therefore another man's tax saving!

Clare Tyson, Hatherleigh