The in-bin camera automatically records what someone has thrown away every time they use their kitchen bin.

Families will be rated on how efficiently they recycle by a town hall monitoring office.

Academics at Newcastle University who have pioneered bin-TV say it could be used to 'change the behaviour' of people who refuse to recycle or throw away too much food and packaging.

But critics of the methods councils have used both to spy on their residents and to enforce their compulsory recycling schemes warned that bin cameras have menacing implications.

Doretta Cocks of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections said: 'We keep being told there are curbs on the way councils are allowed to spy on people.



'They put microchips in the bins ready for pay-as-you-throw bin taxes, and that died a death. I hope councils realise that this sinister idea is taking things too far.'

The Newcastle system - labelled BinCam by researchers - has been perfected while the future of rubbish collections hangs in the balance.

Project: Newcastle University students Julia Miebach, left, and Anja Thieme, are seen with the BinCam and a laptop showing the Bincam Facebook page

Councils are waiting for the Government's waste review, expected later this month, which is likely to set down that household rubbish should be collected at least once a week.

But there remains a major question over whether Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman will tell councils to get rid of their 'waste reduction' schemes that use bin rationing, bin police and £100 on-the-spot fines for rule breakers.

The BinCam trials have used camera phones fixed to the inside of students' kitchen bin lids and equipped with sensors so they take a picture every time the lid is closed.

The pictures are posted on Facebook so that other students taking part in the experiment can see what their neighbours have thrown away.

Trials are to be extended to student houses at three universities in Britain and Germany later this year, Newcastle University authorities hope to run it in staff homes, and Professor Patrick Olivier, in charge of the experiment, said: 'People are interested.'

Researcher Anja Thieme, one of the post graduate students in charge of the project, said: 'There is a naming and shaming element to the experiment although it's fun rather than humiliating.

'It's a bit like having your conscience sat on your shoulder niggling away at you. And on top of that you know that other people are also judging you.'

'Normally when you throw something away and the lid goes down you forget about it - out of sight out of mind - and that's the end of it.

'But the reality could not be further from the truth. Waste has a massive environmental impact."



According to a research paper produced by the BinCam project, the trial 'raises several privacy and ethical concerns.'



Daniel Hamilton of the Big Brother Watch pressure group said: 'This sounds like an elaborate joke – except it isn’t.



'It beggars belief to think that people could be photographed and placed on US-style 'most wanted' lists for putting rubbish in the wrong bin. Encouraging recycling is fine but publically humiliating those who choose not to is outrageous.



'Have Newcastle dons really got nothing better to do than waste their time and our tax money on preposterous ideas like this?'

‘They put microchips in the bins ready for pay-as-you-throw bin taxes, and that died a death.

"I hope councils realise that this sinister idea is taking things too far.’