Kingston Council has revealed that microchips are to be fitted to dustbins in Berrylands from next month - and it refused to rule out introducing charges for people who fail to recycle.

Next month's waste collection trial will see rubbish collected fortnightly and recyclables once a week in a bid to cut the amount of waste going to landfill.

Council vans will not initially be equipped to measure how much waste each house is throwing out, but it has not shut the lid on charging the most wasteful residents if a similar service is rolled out borough-wide in 2008.

But executive member Councillor Liz Shard said residents should not be concerned by the emergence of chip technology in their bins.

She added: "We cannot measure the waste of any one individual - all we can get is an average figure for the trial area that will help us to assess the relative merits of the trial.

"Until we offer parity of service to all our residents, including all those in flats, we certainly will not be thinking about moves such as those fines for households producing too much rubbish."

Meanwhile, many residents have written to the Comet complaining that the pilot collection scheme will not work for them.

Doretta Cocks, from camapaign group Weekly Waste, has advised residents to protest in writing to the council against the changes.

She said: "An increasing number of councils in the UK have introduced or plan to introduce alternate week waste collection.

"In plain terms general refuse will be collected only 26 times a year. We support kerbside recycling but not at the expense of a reduced frequency in general waste collection."

One of her main gripes is that maggots and flies have become a constant problem for residents with reduced rubbish collection, a problem Kingston Council believes it has solved by including the collection of organic waste, meaning the only thing which cannot be collected is packaging and disposable nappies.

Coun Shard said: "It is important to stress that the trial will see the collection of food waste on a weekly basis, precisely so that the fortnightly residual waste collection does not encounter the problems that have been mentioned here."

The pilot is due to start in Berrylands on Monday, November 6.