Has anyone left anything out recently that has been picked up/ taken? In the past, I have found that if I leave a piece of scrap out it goes in 24 hours, but this didn’t happen last time.
I have an old rusty radiator, some metal car bumpers and a broken rice cooker to get rid off and don’t want to take them to Lewisham recycling centre as they will ruin my car and the centre is not accepting vans at present.
Any ideas?
TIA
Just chuck it out on the pavement with any other old junk you don’t want. Bin contents, uneaten food,anything you like. Got an old mattress ? - just put it on the pavement, preferably so that pedestrians can not get past. It’s fine. Lots of people seems to do that round my way. Then my next door neighbour furiously reports them on “fixmystreet” and the council come and cheerfully collect it. Rinse and repeat each couple of weeks. No worries !!
We had our radiators replaced last year and our plumber called a company and within a few hours they collected all the old radiators, for free as it’s scrap they can make money off. It would make more sense to arrange a collection that way rather than just leave it outside and hope.
The broken rice cooker could probably be dropped off at PC World for WEE recycling - if PC World is were currently open, which I believe it isn’t.
Sorry that’s not very helpful is it 
There is a WEEE bin by Sydenham Woods.
Are you sure they haven’t put it out for a scheduled council collection? When I went to book a mattress collection they advise to leave it outside the day of collection. Maybe some residents are just putting theirs out too early? A lot of residents live in small 1-bed flats with no outdoor space, I can slightly sympathise if they have no room to temporarily store their old mattress for collection (as long as it’s not blocking paths). The earliest slot the council could offer us was 4 weeks away.
To answer original post’s question. Radiators are usually collected quite promptly by scrap metal collectors when left outside. Our plumber made a call and within 30minutes it had been picked up by them.
Thank you for all the helpful replies. I wasn’t aware of the WEEE bin by Sydenham woods and not thought about calling the scrap collectors myself - in the past, I have left things out at night and they have gone before I’ve been up in the morning - I’ve always thought they are like grown up tooth fairies, but I haven’t seen/ heard anyone collecting in lockdown. I learnt to leave things for those with the desire/ ability to scrap for value after having a tip delivered on my drive and finding that everything I put in disappeared overnight. On the upside, a number of my neighbours were able to use the skip and get rid of unwanted items on that occasion.
For anyone thinking of using the council service, I used the Lewisham large items collection last week and they collect anytime from 6.30am to 2.30pm. The first slot I could get was 3 weeks after I made the booking. The items were collected about lunchtime, but in the past I would have expected a scrap merchant to take some of the items before then. The council collection costs £20 for each ‘lot’ which can be for up to 4 items from a drop down list (and none of the items I now need to get rid of). I thought it was excellent value though for a sofabed, roll of carpet, underlay and broken lawnmower.