Here in Birmingham, Tory city council leader Mike Whitby has issued several "over my dead body" vows never, ever to even contemplate moving collections from weekly to once every two weeks. So convinced is he that this is in tune with voter sentiment that he put a strong Tory showing in the council elections three years ago down to his "your bins are safe in our hands" guarantee.
It would be stupid to deny that removing weekly collections, a staple of the British way of life for decades, would be anything other than highly controversial. On the other hand, the Audit Commission is charged with making local government more efficient and there is plenty of scope for cost cutting by reorganising refuse collection.
More of us are recycling household rubbish, encouraged and helped to do so by councils. This will continue over the next few years as the environmental rationale for recycling begins to be understood by more and more families and becomes a way of life.
Separating cans, bottles, glass, plastics and newspapers into different boxes and bags will be as routine an operation as throwing everything into one bin used to be. There is already less rubbish to put into Birmingham's traditional black bin bags, and therefore less to pick up on a weekly basis.
A radical, and cost-saving move, would be to invest in large wheelie bins for non-recyclable rubbish and switch to fortnightly collections.
Up-front capital investment in buying the bins would be repaid through the lower cost of a more efficient service.
The sort of thing, you might think, that would appeal to Mr Pickles.