The source of the anguish about Big Brother-style household bin monitoring is a small, black disc - about 3cm in diameter - which sits under the lip of the bin.

The disc contains a chip known as a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag which, when the bin is picked up by the cart, relays information stored on it – the serial number of the bin and the house to which it belongs to – to a reader on the cart’s hoist.

A computer system combines these details with the weight of the bin, which is measured during the emptying process, so that the council knows how much rubbish the owner is throwing out.

Contrary to popular belief, the chip is not ‘smart’ and makes no determination as to the bin’s contents, but could easily be removed by an aggrieved owner.

It can, however, be used to identify the type of bin, so for instance if a household had mistakenly put out a waste bin on a day when recycling was being collected, the truck could be directed to put the bin down.

The tag, which is embedded in a small recess under the front edge of the bin – on the opposite side to the hinge, must come within 5cm of the reader in order that it be detected.

Details of the house number, as well as the time of day and bin weight are sent via a cable to a box in the driver’s compartment, where they are stored on a card or, increasingly, sent direct to the council via the mobile network.

The Local Government Association said that the tags were nothing more than serial numbers, which bins have always had, but PM Onboard, a company which makes the readers, said that they were an improvement on existing technologies, such as barcodes, because they could be read in the wet.

RFID tags have long been used in commercial waste removal as a way for operators to know what to charge customers, but despite being trialled for curbside collections four years ago, have not been widely adopted.

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