Living in Brighton for four years and regularly reading The Argus letters pages, every time I see comments similar to those made by John Horsfield (August 18), I have to check my address to see if I am living in the same city.

I have no complaints about the service provided. I leave my home at 5am every morning and see the street sweeper at work. The binmen collect regular as clockwork and are only late if there is a bank holiday, which is better than the service I received at previous addresses.

If I forget to put my rubbish out, they will go down the stairs to my basement flat to collect it.

Once I had to remove a TV aerial with a 10ft pole from the roof. I left it by the dustbin, intending to take it to the dump after work but when I got home the binmen had saved me the trouble.

No one can argue Brighton is a filthy city and Mr Horsfield dismisses too readily factors which contribute to the litter, such as seagulls, pigeons and hot weather.

Wind is another factors which is not mentioned. I had my rubbish collected yesterday and today found empty crisp packets and used tissues blowing around my front door.

Do we expect binmen to be on call 24 hours a day to tackle such tragedies? Mr Horsfield's idea about separating food waste from other rubbish is interesting but what hope is there of anyone buying into this when we can't even get people to put crisp packets and tissues into bins?

There is also another type of wildlife which does not improve the problem: The Brighton tenant.

I have seen changes over the past four years with property developers buying up more and more of the street and renting the properties on short-term contracts.

The result is an increasingly transitory population not giving a jot about the area where they live.

-David Castagnetti, Brighton