MY business is recycling printer cartridges and I recently learned that Swindon Council buys new cartridges rather than recycled ones.

I was interested to see the April edition of the council's Swindon News publication which highlights the importance of recycling.

Thinking that it might wish to practise what it preaches, I emailed council leader Mike Bawden, offering to advise the council on adopting a greener buying policy.

A week later I had received no response and phoned Mr Bawden.

He admitted ignoring my email, but reluctantly agreed that if I resent it he would take some action.

Another week on, my email remains unacknowledged and I must assume that the council is less concerned about recycling than it would claim.

Perhaps through this letter I can explain to Mr Bawden that 4.5 litres of oil are used to produce a typical toner cartridge, which will take 450 years to decompose in a landfill site.

The council must buy many hundreds of new cartridges each year amounting to a lot of oil.

I hope that the council at least passes its used cartridges to a recycling agent but by continuing to buy new cartridges it perpetuates oil wastage.

If it is serious about recycling, the council should buy remanufactured cartridges which are widely available. This would waste less oil and reduce costs considerably.

Our council is currently among the worst in the UK, failure to act on issues such as this is surely a contributory factor.

G GILDER

Wanborough