This was the scene at the busy Borough Council office earlier this week as pensioners queued to try to make sense of the authority's controversial new bin scheme.

Cue the obvious quip by one: "This is all a load of rubbish!"

And cue the WLBC PR spin: 'West Lancashire Borough Council has welcomed the overwhelming response from residents to order their wheeled bin requirements before 4 June.

In a bid to reach its recycling target of 50% by 2020, the Council has made a number of changes to the bins residents need for their recycling.

Brown bins are being introduced only to those residents that sign up to the garden waste service, green bins will be used for paper and cardboard recycling and blue bins will be used for plastic bottles, glass and cans recycling.

While Council staff are working hard to deal with telephone enquiries the quickest and easiest way for residents to find out more about the changes to the recycling services, order a new wheeled bin and sign up to the Council's garden waste collection service is to go to the website www.westlancs.gov.uk/refuse and follow the relevant links.

You can also access a host of other Council services through the website www.westlancs.gov.uk.

Councillor Ian Moran, Leader of West Lancashire Borough Council, said: "It has been an extremely busy time with the Council's Customers Services team receiving an unprecedented number of calls regarding changes to the refuse and recycling service. We acknowledge it has been frustrating for some residents trying to get through to the Council and I would like to apologise for this. We are now making good progress processing all the requests for new bins."

The Council would like to reassure residents that when they place their order online for a replacement or new wheeled bin or subscribe to the garden waste service that their request is being processed and there is no need to contact the authority to confirm this. Delivery of wheeled bins is taking place daily, including Saturdays in the lead up to the 4 June launch.'

Perhaps the Council forgot that many older folk have an innate distrust of the internet, or simply can't access it - or even know how to use it...