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Incpen has called for "the emotion to be taken out of the recycling debate" following a series of newspaper articles suggesting that the local authority recycling system is collapsing.

Recycling bodies have also spoken out to rubbish reports in The Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph suggesting that councils across the country were cutting their waste collection services as the materials they are recovering currently have no value.

In particular, the reports cited the withdrawal of 31 paper recycling banks in Somerset and Hertfordshire council’s decision to stop accepting certain types of plastics.

However, Incpen director Jane Bickerstaffe said that the public needed to understand that the laws of supply and demand applied to the recycling market as much as any other, and that using virgin materials was not always a bad thing.

"Recycling materials are a commodity. We need to help local authorities explain to the public that if they can’t sell the materials, they need to dispose of them safely elsewhere.

"That’s not a dreadful thing, and when the market picks up again then they will recycle the materials. There’s always this suggestion that the public is difficult, but they can understand that," she said.

The Local Government Association (LGA), meanwhile, rubbished the reports’ suggestion that the Somerset and Hertfordshire cases were evidence of a wider trend, arguing that the cutbacks were localised.

Spokesman Matt Nicholls said: "The newspapers have taken what’s happened and the credit crunch and linked the two. We are not aware of any other cutbacks in local authority recycling."

A spokeswoman for plastics recycling body Recoup told Packaging News that it was not aware of any councils other than Hertfordshire changing their plastics recycling requirements.

"We would advise householders to continue recycling as per their local authority schemes," she added.

CPI recovered paper sector manager Peter Seggie said that he was not aware of any councils withdrawing recycling bins, and said that the Somerset case was likely to be an isolated incident. "Local authorities still have targets to meet, although some may be looking at the economics of it," he said. "Recycling isn't going to stop."