The Telegraph reported that official figures show one in four local authorities have replaced traditional sized refuse bins with ones that are up to 50 percent smaller.
The number of councils that have supplied smaller bins has almost doubled in three years, climbing form 53 in 2010 to 94 last year.
Campaigners have warned the move will encourage fly tipping or dumping rubbish in their neighbours’ bins, especially in areas that collect black bag waste fortnightly.
Local authorities that have chosen to reduce their general waste bin size instead supply more recycling bins and food waste containers in a bid to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.
Doretta Cocks, Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection – “It is preventing people from getting rid of rubbish responsibly, leading to fly-tipping and rubbish being piled in back gardens. They think if they limit the capacity for waste then people will recycle more. They are wrong”
Cities like Bristol, Brighton, Leicester, Sheffield and several London Boroughs to Mendip in Somerset, East Devon and East Dorset, have seen a reduction in refuse container size.
Doretta Cocks, from the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, said: “It is preventing people from getting rid of rubbish responsibly, leading to fly-tipping and rubbish being piled in back gardens. They think if they limit the capacity for waste then people will recycle more. They are wrong.
“I have real concerns for large families. That’s when people start going round and leaving rubbish in their neighbours’ bins, which leads to conflict.
“They’re not being realistic. Quite honestly I think people will resent every penny of council tax they pay in the near future because the service is inadequate.”
Under EU directives, the UK must recycle half of all household waste by 2020 but has stagnated at 43 percent. Some local authorities are falling significantly short of their targets.
Linda Crichton, head of the collections programme at Wrap, said: “In the last 10 years the amount of household waste is reducing and councils have been introducing new recycling services.
“That means there is less waste needing to be collected which goes into the black bin. There is also a nudge effect. If people have less capacity for residual waste, it does make them think about what they can recycle.”