Five households have signed up to a programme that puts photographs of every item placed in wheelie bins on Facebook in a bid to raise awareness about recycling.
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.
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.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000566/Smile-Youre-bin-cam-The-snooping-device-record-throw-away.html#ixzz1OmCoivE1
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