But as I write in The Herald today, I'd be cutting my bin space by much more than half since I now have access to a friend's garbage service she doesn't use, and my family has come to depend on that extra capacity.

I don't know why, or indeed whether, we create more rubbish than other families. There are four, sometimes five, of us at home, and in theory we should add relatively little to landfill. We rarely have takeaway, we cook using ingredients rather than packaged or processed food, we buy fruit and veg mostly at food markets without packaging, and all our organic waste goes to the chooks or the composter.

One issue may be compression, that we don't squash down our garbage well enough before we put it in the bin. Another is that almost certainly we don't recycle as well as we could. I used the word could rather than should there because I doubt recycling much of the stuff that goes in the garbage bin will help anyone. Indeed, I have a strong suspicion that it would end up going to landfill anyway. Are we supposed to put empty cans of food into the recycling? Food-smeared paper? Meat wrapping?

I have no doubt that most people will transfer much of their garbage into the recycling bin when the small bins arrive next January. My family and others will limit that to recyclables, others may not be so fussy.

Newcastle council is seeking to reduce its waste-disposal costs by reducing the amount it pays to the State Government as the state waste levy, at the moment $52 a tonne for landfill waste and soon to be substantially more. I believe, however, that if landfill quantities decrease the gluttonous State Government will simply increase the levy to maintain its revenue stream.

My family is going to give the half-size bin a burl but I suspect it's all a little pointless. That said, anything that might encourage a reduction in the obscene amount of resources that goes into packaging must be worth trying. Is there, though, a better way to go about it?