Man fined £75 for dumping his rubbish - in a litter bin

So he neatly packaged his food scraps in a carrier bag and deposited it in a public bin.

A few days later a letter arrived announcing he had been fined £75 - for 'mis-using' the bin by putting domestic refuse in it.

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Council snoopers traced him after rummaging through the bag's contents, in which they found an envelope addressed to him.

Yesterday 84-year-old Mr Richards, of Boston, Lincolnshire, said: "I've been fined for putting my rubbish in a bin and that's just ludicrous.

"The council told me I was flytipping. But I've never thrown litter in my life.

"Lots of people do what I did. My bin bags are collected fortnightly, and I have only a very small back yard.

"It would be intolerable to keep rotting food waste indoors for a fortnight until the next collection rolls around.

"Mr Richards reluctantly paid the fine after being warned if he did not pay in 14 days the penalty would double and he could face a fine of up to £2,500 if he took the case to court.

The retired journalist added: "The council say that litter is what you carry around with you and that what I put in the bin wasn't litter. But it's a very vague definition."

A Boston Council spokesman said: "Public litter bins are for everyone to use. If one is repeatedly filled by an individual with their domestic waste it creates a problem."

Mr Richards, who runs the Apostrophe Protection Society to promote the correct use of the punctuation mark, was fined days after the council launched a campaign urging members of the public to make more use of litter bins.

Readers of a local newspaper are being asked to identify culprits from CCTV pictures of litterbugs.