I SPENT hours sobbing after reading Dawn Box's letter (Your Letters, April 9) on her three or four black waste bags per week, then the question came into my mind "what does she find to fill four bags?".

Would she be kind enough to give readers an itemised inventory of the contents of these bags? (Our family of two uses less than half a bag per week).

Cans, we crush with a boot and take to the can bank monthly; magazines, newspapers, junk mail and card boxes are all recycled; glass bottles to the bottle bank; kitchen and garden waste are composted at home (subsidised compost bins are available at the library).

As a nation we produce 400 million tons of waste a year, 25 million tons of which is domestic. This all has to be disposed off.

The three important Rs are not reading, riting and rithmatic, but reduce, reuse and recycle, not forgetting repair, reconsider or regret?

DENNIS C NIGHTINGALE-SMITH, Hanley Swan.