Furious residents watched as binmen took all their separated recycling and dumped it into one bin to take away.

After locals spent time making sure glass and plastic and paper and cardboard went in different containers, binmen mixed them all up - despite the council saying it will refuse to collect unseparated recyling.

Some residents in Canterbury, Kent, were so infuriated by what they saw that they phoned up the council and refused to separate their waste when it was merely being mixed by waste workers.

But though Canterbury City Council said they would investigate, they also threatened not to collect residents' rubbish if they refused to separate it.

The council announced last year that checks on recycling bins would be 'ramped-up'; warning residents that contaminated loads would not be emptied by the authority's waste collection firm, Canenco.

Residents in Canterbury are asked to put their paper and cardboard waste into red boxes and their glass and plastic in blue bins, ostensibly so the rubbish can be emptied into different recycling compartments at the back of rubbish trucks.

However, locals keen to prove that waste workers were combining the separated bin loads together began gathering video evidence.

One video, filmed by a resident who wishes to remain anonymous, shows workers in orange high-viz suits hurriedly dumping rubbish from small red, black and blue bins into a larger red bin before taking it to the lorry.

Similar actions were said to have been observed and filmed on three separate occasions by locals.

One former binman, Martin Johnson, said waste workers were making a 'mockery' of people's diligence in responsibly separating their rubbish.

The 66-year-old said: "I am a very keen recycler because this is what the world wants us to do.

"Obviously in my youth, it was no problem at all – but we are using up the Earth’s resources at a hell of a rate of knots and we need to do something to help the planet.

“Having previously been an agency dustcart driver and knowing how things operate from the inside, I was dismayed by seeing it all go into one part of the truck.

“I assume they take it to the recycling site and tip it up altogether.

“I thought they would put the cardboard in one part of the truck and the rest in the other.

"It made me so annoyed that I phoned them."

Mr Johnson, who said there were other occasions when Canenco workers had been caught off camera combining recyclables, phoned the council to tell them he refused to continue separating his recycling when workers later simply mixed it into the same bin.

But the council said that if he did refuse to separate his recycling, his bins would not be collected.

“I told them: ‘That’s it. I’m not sorting out my recycling anymore and I’m going to chuck it all into one bin,'" Mr Johnson explained.

"The lady on the other end of the phone said: ‘Excuse me, sir, we won’t pick it up'.

"I told her they will, as that’s what they’re doing anyway. At the time,