Dear fellow posters.

For your information, my local council WANT us, the householders to come up with other uses for our soon-to-be-defunct bins. They have INVITED us to keep them and use them for other purposes on the basis that if we don't, they, the council have to collect them from us and will then chop them up- and chuck them in landfill. That is EXACTLY the fate of my bin as indicated in the literature from my local council. Do you consider that preferable?

I did not make this clear in my original post as I thought I was posting a practical question in search of a practical answer on a gardening forum not on 'Moral Dilemma! Please Guide Me!' thus did not feel the need to explain myself. I obviously have not been a memeber of this forum long enough to realise this prerequisite.

Thankyou to those who did attempt to stick to the point and not get all moral and superior about this.