Bin collection changes

Just read the Lewisham newsletter & saw changes to him collections coming in to most areas from October. Not sure if I’ve missed a post on this already, apologies if so.

Black bins to be collected fortnightly, plus food waste collections being introduced. Only for houses or houses converted into flats.

Think it’s good personally. If we’re on it with our recycling we barely have any landfill waste. We compost so may not use the food waste collection, although if they accept animal bones & cooked food, as some LA food collections do, that’d be brilliant.

http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/wasterecycle/waste-changes/Pages/Changes-to-rubbish-and-recycling-collections.aspx

Thanks for sharing this info.

There was an impassioned discussion on these plans a while ago but it’s probably good to have this new and separate topic now the plans have been confirmed.

I can see it explicitly in the Lewisham page but will all other bins, except the black bin, be collected weekly? It’s just the black bin that will be fortnightly?

From what I gather that’s the case. I guess to really push recycling.

I still feel it’s a yesterday’s solution to the problem, but it looks like this is all the council can do or afford. These days, machines at recycling plants are able to separate waste into its different components automatically, and usually much better than humans. And because many people don’t make the effort to always put their waste in the correct bin, this process has to place anyway before anything is being recycled.

Instead, we’re now going to have a fourth (fully staffed) diesel lorry running around the same streets doing different things. I can’t really see this being efficient or helping the environment. On top of that, we’re ending up with ever more bins lining up in front of our tiny houses.

Nice touch from the council though to provide inside bins and some biodigradable liners as well.

I hope there is an opt out for the food waste bins. I have virtually zero food waste as I compost everything that isn’t animal related (or, if fresh, it goes to the chickens). I guess I might have the odd bone but it would take me years to fill a food waste bin.

The plans seem badly communicated. We are a block of flats with communal bins so seems from the information on the website that we will to be exempt and will continue with the same regime as we have now, but when I checked on the new collection times our whole road was included in the new regime. There seems to be not useful way of contacting Lewisham Council to find out what will happen in October.

They should just offer a service like the Garden bin where you pay £60 extra a year for a weekly collection.

The only issue I can think of is identifying which bins are which but I’m sure they can find a solution for that.

Leaflets about this have been delivered today so nay bake things a bit clearer, hopefully.

No leaflets here yet but we’ll look out for them.

Hi all, just had a frustrating conversation with Lewisham council. We live in a converted block of flats in Honor Oak on a primarily single housing street - for 4 flats we have 3 black bins and 2 green, which are barely adequate for 4 3 bed flats. There’s no room for additional bins on the property without knocking down walls and paving front gardens, which we are unable to do directly (leaseholders - the rest of the flats are rented from a HA). Lewisham have offered three additional bins, which will have to be stored on the street. None of this seems suitable in light of the reduction in collections. Anyone else got this problem? Mods - if there is already a topic on this please merge - couldn’t see one on mobile.

I have noticed the new food and kitchen bins have been delivered great, except where there are multiple households the have delivered only one set of bins? Surely using council tax records the correct number could be delivered to the right number of (house) flats?

My understanding is that the food waste will be collected by the same lorry that does the garden waste. So, just the 3 we have currently doing more efficient work.

I wonder if it would be possible to eschew the food bin and just put the food in the garden bin (seeing as I pay for it already)?

Have had the same thought. Don’t know honestly. One for sure is subsidising the other but as the food waste will contain any food scraps then that could get smellier so perhaps best not?

Here are the new collection days for waste and recycling.

http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/wasterecycle/waste-changes/Documents/WasteCollectionDays.pdf

From Lewisham website:
All of the following items can be recycled in your food waste bin:

leftovers, uneaten food and plate scrapings
dairy products and eggs
bread, cakes and pastries
raw and cooked meat and fish, including bones
tea bags and coffee grounds
raw and cooked vegetables, mouldy fruit, peelings
grains and pulses including rice, pasta and beans
mouldy or out-of-date ready meals removed from all their packaging.

So this along with my compost bin, garden waste bin and recycling bin should mean the black bin will be fairly empty apart from those items that can’t be recycled.

I would like somewhere in SE23 that recycles textiles. All the textile bins seem to be miles away.

I think there is a clothes/textiles recycling bin in the car park of The CoOp, isn’t there?

Oh thanks I’d forgotten that - it’s not a Council one so guess it must be one of those collection companies

I thought textiles could go into the ordinary green recycling bin?

also there’s a difference in how the green garden waste (in the brown bin) and the kitchen leftovers waster (in the grey bin) and processes post collection. so the two can’t be mixed. the green waste isn’t processed to appropriately deal with food waste, bones, fats etc.
this kind of kitchen waste is probably the worst for decomposing anaerobically in landfill to produce harmful waste greenhouse gasses, mostly methane, so getting that out of the landfill stream will be most beneficial.

I had thought so too… but maybe that was at my last home in Southwark.

This is the bit I don’t get about these bin changes. I thought close to 100% of Lewisham waste was incinerated, which in turn generates electricity, so why do we want to divert waste intended for incineration to somewhere else? The council says this will save a little bit of money, but they certainly don’t explain how or why.

Does anyone know?

Hi Daffodil, I obviously don’t know whereabouts you are, but I usually take mine to the council one in Canadian Avenue behind the Catford library if it’s any help.

@jrothlis I think I read somewhere that Lewisham is trying to reduce incineration of certain waste types, including food, where incineration is not efficient. Have you had a look at their website? I believe there is information there on the reasons behind the changes (if memory serves). Their Environment Department on Twitter is a good source of info and answers queries pretty quickly: @EnviroLewisham

Re textiles: they were allowed in the green bin for a few years but no longer. Probably too much contamination. There are no council textile facilities locally as there are so many on-street charity collection bins. The council recommends that’s where we take textiles for recycling.

presumably any savings made by the council will be because they are running fewer pick up bin lorries, and any kitchen wast that isn’t going to SELCHP means that Lewisham can make money by taking other london boroughs waste for incineration.

Well I never realised that - I’ve been merrily throwing old socks, t-shirts etc… into my green bin for years now.

That’s what happens when someone sticks a dirty great sticker of whats allowed/not allowed on your bin - you tend to follow its guidance until someone replaces the sticker (which they haven’t)

If they want to improve their contamination rates, maybe checking that the guidance on the bins themselves is not out of date would be a good first step.

+1 @armadillo - am also perturbed to discover that the bin guidance I had been following is incorrect.

Was also planning on visiting the clothes bank in Forest Hill Sainsburys car park but can not find mention of it online. Is it still there?

I raised this with Lewisham and they said leaflets went out to explain the changes, but I don’t remember getting one. And that we should follow the guidance on their website, not the labels on the bins. Which is pretty ridiculous.

Recycling bins in FH Sainsbury’s are not there any more. And the ones in the Sainbsurys at Bell Green are always full. I tend to put bagged textiles in the boot of the car where they lurk until I happen to be passing the Waitrose in Beckenham. They have several textile bins, always with spare capacity.

For our street the leaflets the council were probably referring to were just tucked under the lids of the green bids on a pouring wet Wednesday collection day so by the time those that work would have got home there probably wasn’t a legible leaflet left! Luckily I was home that morning and managed to rescue one that wasn’t too badly damaged and photocopied for the other residents in our small block of flats. However it seems that the contractor is constantly changing their minds. The council website now says not to even put plastic bags in the green bins which were always allowed,

No plastic bags? Really? That is a blow.

A separate issue, but it’s shocking how much of the plastic film used in food packaging is labelled as ‘currently unsuitable for recycling’

Shows the extent of confusion. I was always under the impression that you could not recycle plastic bags.

One other issue which causes me angst is the clear film often used over plastic trays. We’re supposed to fully remove that from the trays before we recycle, throwing the film away. Sometimes that film never NEVER comes off.

Some ‘plastic’ film is actually cellophane and not plastic. Cellophane is made from cellulose (ie it’s plant-based) and, according to Wikipedia, is 100% biodegradable. Not sure I’d want to put it in my compost heap though.

Just been looking at Lewisham’s recycling page and see that polystyrene is no longer accepted either (not that I ever had much of that to put in!). So that’s plastic bags, clothing and polystyrene that are no longer accepted. As Lewisham don’t seem to promote this information, surely that has increased the amount of contaminated recycling?

And I didn’t see the Mayor’s letter that was supposed to have been delivered in July (fortunately there’s a copy online). Was it sent in an envelope or just posted loose through the letterbox?

Can you post the link?

Just seen that too. Though we don’t get much, when we do it does tend to be bulky so this seems to be a bit of an oversight.

Recycling page:
http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/wasterecycle/Pages/What-can-i-put-in-my-recycling-bin.aspx

@armadillo + 2! But it explains why I saw a pile of clothes pulled out of a green bin
by the refuse people a while back. I regularly check the bin lid for dos and don’ts.

I wonder if it will all go to make compost which the council can sell on. I admit I haven’t looked in to it at all but some councils do make and sell their own from local waste.

Just checking Lewisham Web site and the changes to what can and can’t go in the green bins is vast. Prior to leaving FH we also followed the guidelines of the stickers on the bins, obviously now wrong. There seems to be very little thought gone into recycling and informing residents. We did not receive ANY new info prior to leaving in April this year and we were quite fanatical about recycling. Lewisham needs to have a long hard look at its bin policy.

Lewisham Environmental services could also do far more on social media. Simply posting on here would reach tens of thousands of local people. I’ve reached out to them about this - perhaps worth others doing so too?

If they are going to be so picky about what can go in the green bin & want can’t, everybody will give up in the end! I thought the textile bin in Canadian Avenue was Council, as it does advertise it on the Lewisham website, but hey-ho. It’s rarely full so I always use it.
I’ve never received a leaflet saying about plastic bags, so I’ll now take them to Sainsbury’s for recycling as I used to!

Problem is it needs to reach all it’s residents, not all of whom are internet savvy. Here is a good start but they need to leaflet everyone (hopefully using recycled leaflets) with their policy, and then stick with it. As mentioned, we went by the sticker on our bin, if that is wrong then change the bloody thing.

Our local council has a small leaflet which outlines what can and cant go into what bins so there are no mistakes made.

We don’t even have stickers on bin. Feeling left out.

Well you are a relative newbie!

My bins aren’t.

Oh Dear, you mean you don’t get a personal service from the Waste Disposal Facilities Operatives. Obviously you dont give them a good enough Christmas box. Your bins may be old but you are a newbie. A bit of bribery helps enormously, just dont tell the powers that be at the council.

I have a question regarding bins… for whatever reason, there seems to be a spare bin that has been living on the pavement between our neighbours and our own houses. It’s not ours or any of the neighbours so God knows where it came from… but it’s been there for a few months… it’s not causing any obstruction or anything but it would be nice to get rid of it. Can I approach the council about getting it removed?

Yes, call Envirocall and they should be able to remove it.

We have the same here.
I also managed to order new bins for a short stay place up the road which is always having over flowing bins.

Looking forward to the new collection regime. Interested to see how it will work out.

Just to add my comments to the debate.
It is true that most of Lewisham black bin waste gets burnt, but our recycling rates are low. (According the the national measures)
What is annoying is that when people do compost /reduce usage that waste is not counted as recycled because the Council is not picking it up. Therefore a family with wormery and compost heap, who is careful and not consuming products with lots of packaging, reuse items and share amongst friends and neighbours may generate only little waste, but because it is mostly black bin stuff their recycled % is low as the Council is not doing the work for them. So the best form of reducing waste ie not generating it in the first place is not recognised by the national formula.
As I seem to remember reasons for introducing collections of food waste were in no particular order:
Need for more recycled waste to be collected( about a third of black bin waste has been food so opportunity to make better figures)
Avoid future penalties if certain recycling rates are not achieved (this was another significant consideration, a bit perverse considering our contribution to landfill is negligible)
Current contract was at the renewal / end stage, so options have been looked at again

I take on the points that the communication about what goes in what bin etc could be improved. I feel for those responsible as whatever they do it is rarely enough for some.
(To illustrate: I was approving a leaflet about local assembly last year which was delivered to every household in Forest Hill Ward. On the back page we had all the information about what goes into what bin and what can’t be recycled. Still my husband maintained that it was OK to put textile in the green bin. He promptly recycled the leaflet before reading it fully)

Thanks for that information, @MajaHilton. It’s really interesting to see how the statistics can mean different things when looked at another way.

With regards to information on what we can recycle: I suspect the pyschology of it is that people will always assume the sticker on the bin is the highest authority. If they are not up to date, they must be replaced or removed. Sending out a leaflet to supersede the stickers is never going to work.

Out of interest, what happens to the recycling if it does get contaminated by something that shouldn’t be there - like textiles?

Is there a process to extract it, or does it invalidate the whole load and end up as landfill?

If the former, then there must be a potential cost saving by the reducing contamination and required processing. If the later then there’s a good opportunity for getting the recycling % rates up right there.

Excellent question.

Let me check and come back.

All good points Maja about the fact that if you try to generate less waste in the first place it doesn’t get counted. For example we have a compost bin at home which I fill with about 3 compost caddies worth of fruit & veg waste a week. We get a veg box delivered so a lot less packaging than if we’d bought the equivalent in a supermarket. We get milk in milk bottles so don’t need to recycle plastic milk cartons. Etc.

Also, restaurants produce huge amounts of food waste. I was watching a tv programme about how it’s not common in the UK to ask to take your uneaten food home (unlike in the US but then portion sizes are bigger there so it’s rare to finish a meal). It’s just not seen as the done thing here, I have no idea why as it seems quite sensible really.

If you go to a chinese restaurant it is the norm to take leftover food home both in the UK and Asia.
Surprise the chinese waiter and say “Da Bough” she/he should return with cintainers for your leftovers.

You could try “Mai Dunn” and you will get the bill, just be aware they may assume you speak the lingo and speak to you in chinese

We always ask for 'a doggie bag’s to take our leftovers home. I mean, who doesn’t like pizza for breakfast

Yes Wagamama is good for this too - gave me s big plastic takeaway container for our leftover noodles (which I now have to recycle )

Pizza and Chinese food I have seen in doggy bags, but I haven’t seen it happen much in other restaurants. I agree it’s great to open the fridge and suddenly remember your leftover pizza

Well you can either go down this route:
https://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/socialcare/health/parenting/being-a-parent/Pages/Reusable-nappies.aspx
or this (which is what we have done):

Hi Simon,

In answer to your questions I have got confirmation.

If some textile got into recycling it would be taken out by the sorting Contracor and then sent to SELCHP for burning. Nothing goes to landfill but it is currently not recycled either. There is also some additional pollution of a lorry of an extra trip and a charge to the Council. I guess that would be minor infringement.

There are number of households who will receive a letter if binmen have refused to take their recycling due to visible contamination. In that case the rubbish will go same as General one, to SELCHP.

The rate of contamination for the last month was 15%, so we could all do better.

@RachaelDunlop
New bin stickers are on the way.

Hope is to be distributed in the next couple of months, but that is not my promise

I am still really scratching my head on the economics of it. There are 116,000 households in Lewisham, and the food recycling will “save £500,000 per year”, which works out to £4.31 per household per year. That is a LOT of faff for £4.31 per year. And isn’t all the extra effort to collect, transport, sort (de-contaminate), and compost the food creating additional environmental impact?

The only way I see it making sense is if this causes people to change their habits (forced by the reduction of the black bin collections to fortnightly). Will be interesting to see how my household changes (if at all).

I doubt we would have enough food waste to fill the little bin in a week. I am not having food festering in the kitchen, especially in the summer, and I am certainly not going to be using new liners every day or so, not when we have to pay for them. A lot of councils give out the liners for free, at the local library or the like. I would be very interested to know if those who live in the small blocks of flats will be expected to use these bins, or just be throwing household waste, unsorted, in the rubbish chute. And they will be exempted from shelling out for the bin liners?

Do you empty your kitchen bin every day currently? I empty mine probably every third or fourth day. No festering, even in the summer. I’m not sure how using the caddy will differ from my current practice, other than kitchen waste being separated into food and non-food.

Councils seem to fiddle with the bin collection contract every time it’s up for renewal. No matter how miniscule the savings are. Their hands are tied on the real issues / massive cost pressures such as social care and social housing.

The only thing it seems to legitimately do is force people to recycle more. As someone said above, the statistics are flawed. But having a quick Google, it does seem to change people’s behaviour. We aren’t the first Borough to implement this, so it’s not like we are flying in the dark as to the outcomes. I’m always in favour of copying other schemes that work, rather than trying to be the first.

Seems to work quite well in Bromley.

Blocks of flats with large communal bins seem to be exempt from the new system as far as I can tell - been following it closely as we live in a block of flats.

We lived in Southwark a couple of years ago that operated exactly this system and it worked fine - a closed food waste bin in the kitchen caused no issues at all, no more so that an ordinary kitchen bin. It did make you face the amount of food waste produced which can only be a god thing.

We got our food bins over the weekend. I can see the concerns some have expressed over their sturdiness. Much less sturdy in construction and in the locking mechanism then those we had in Southwark.

They will need watching.

I think I saw somewhere that some free liners will be available from the launch. AFAICT these are just compostable bags so it would make sense to me to use paper bags and would be more environmentally friendly than buying bags. We recycle enough of these to use for this purpose. Some interesting titbits here:
http://councilmeetings.lewisham.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=16509

As far as I can tell, it’s not compulsory to have liners, just convenient. If you don’t want to buy liners, you don’t have to.

Wrapping in newspaper is an option too:

Very flimsy indeed. Once the little tab goes, they are done. Strange that the rest of the construction seems pretty solid.

Think that could be a bit messy though when you empty the little bin into the big bin. I suppose when we buy new liners we have to make sure they are biodegradable?

Yes. I can imagine situations where liners are the way to go, e.g. fish heads and fins etc.

Radical thought, but you could wash the caddy out after emptying into the bigger bin. Yes, liners would be easier. But if you don’t want to buy them, there are alternatives.

I agree re alternatives but if using the food waste bin directly I do not believe that you will get rid of some smells that way unless using detergent and jet spray! Bit of a faff. Would be a bit like using a conventional bin without a bin bag, only worse.

To give some context, the only scraps I see us putting in this caddy are plate scrapings and meat or fish trimmings. Everything else already goes in our own compost caddy.

Absolutely agree, it would be a faff. I’m responding really to people complaining (elsewhere not just here) about ‘having’ to buy bin liners. We all chose to use liners in our kitchen bins now, so we don’t have to wash them out. No one forces us. Buying liners for the new caddys is no different.

Jeez, what the heck are you lot doing with them? Foxes maybe but it sounds more like you are ready for North Korea.

Some info from the Council on changing bin collections

Food waste and fortnightly FAQ

What, when, who & why

What is changing?
Residents who currently have their own wheelie bins will be getting a new, free food waste collection service. Their rubbish (black bin) collections will also be changing to fortnightly.

When are the changes happening?
The new services will start in the week beginning 2 October.

Who will be affected?
The changes will affect residents who live in houses or flats in converted houses. Blocks of flats and estates will not be getting the new food waste service, and they will still get weekly collections. Some roads, or properties on roads, are also excluded from the changes as they are either red routes or do not have space for the bins. Find out which roads are excluded.

Why are rubbish and recycling collections changing?

1.  Because we listen to residents. In 2015 67% of residents asked for a food waste service and 94% thought it was important to recycle more.
   

2.   To increase recycling rates. When we recycle we use fewer natural resources, which helps the environment. 38% of rubbish in black bins is food waste which the new service will enable you to recycle with your food waste bin.
   

3.  To save the Council money. We expect the changes to waste and recycling services will deliver a £500,000 annual saving in the coming years.
   

What about recycling and garden waste?
We will still collect your recycling every week. Check www.lewisham.gov.uk/recyclable to make sure you’re getting the most from your recycling bin. If you are a garden waste subscriber, your collections will still be weekly, but your collection day may change. You’ll find your new collection day in the calendar we’re delivering with your food waste bin. You can sign up for weekly garden waste collections until April 2018 for £60 at www.lewisham.gov.uk/join.

Collections

When will my collection day be?
We will deliver a calendar of your collection dates with your food waste bin and caddy before October. You can also check your new collection day now at www.lewisham.gov.uk/binchanges .

I live in a house that currently has waste collections, but my road isn’t listed on the collections rounds list. Why is that?
A few streets in Lewisham are not getting the new food waste collection service and will continue getting weekly collections. Check if this applies to your street. If your street is not on this list please DM/message/email us your address and we will look into this.

The collection date on my calendar doesn’t match the collection date on the website, which is right?
Please DM/message/email us your address and we will check your collection day.

I live on a red route, will I get food waste collections?
A few streets in Lewisham are not getting the new food waste collection service and will continue getting weekly collections. Check if this applies to your street.

I won’t fit all my food waste in my bin if it’s collected once every two weeks, what do I do?
Food waste is going to be collected weekly from October, it’s only your black bin collections for rubbish that are changing to fortnightly.

What happens to the food waste you will collect?
When you put food in your new silver bin, we will recycle it and turn it into compost. This uses fewer natural resources, is much cheaper than burning it (which is what happens when you put your food waste in your black bin) and it’s better for the environment.

I live on a red route, so I’m keeping weekly waste collections, does my collection day stay the same?
Yes, your collection day will stay the same. There is more information about collection days online.

Complaints – bin size, smells, fly tipping etc.

Six adults live at my property, can I have a weekly collection?
All black bin collections are switching to fortnightly, but in exceptional circumstances, we can consider replacing your standard 180 litre black bin with a 240 litre bin. You are only eligible to apply for a larger bin if you live in a house of multiple occupation (HMO), or if there are other exceptional circumstances. You will be able to request a bigger bin online before the service launches.

I have a big family, can I get a bigger bin?
In exceptional circumstances, we can consider replacing your standard 180 litre black bin with a 240 litre bin. You are only eligible to apply for a larger bin if you live in a property with a house of multiple occupation (HMO) license, or if there are other exceptional circumstances. You will be able to request a bigger bin online before the service launches.

Will the bin smell?
No. We we will collect food waste weekly so it won’t smell. Don’t forget to empty your kitchen caddy regularly into the outside food bin and tie your liners. Your outside food bin also has a lockable lid which will stop smells from getting out.

Won’t these changes mean fly-tipping is going to get worse?
No. If everyone recycles as much as they can and uses the new food waste service, there will be enough space in your black bin for all your non-recyclable rubbish. On-the-spot fines of up to £400 are given to people who are caught fly tipping in Lewisham and if they are prosecuted through the courts they can get a fine of up to £50,000 or a five-year prison sentence. Please report fly-tipping to us.

I don’t have room for a food waste bin outside my property
Your new food waste bin is small. The outdoor bin is about 41cm tall so it will take up much less space than your other bins.

Are the bins fox-proof?
Yes, the outdoor food waste bins are lockable which will stop foxes and other animals from getting in.

I recycle and use the food waste bin but I still have extra waste, what should I do?
Find out how to reduce the amount of rubbish you produce and where you can take your additional waste.

I’m not getting the service – why? / I don’t want the service

I live in a block of flats and I want to recycle my food waste, can I have a bin please?
At the moment the food waste collection service is only for residents who have their own wheelie bins. If you have a garden you can order a compost bin on our website for £10. Wormeries are ideal for flats with a balcony or ground floor garden and will provide you with a free supply of compost and liquid fertilizer that is great for potted plants and window boxes.

I compost my food waste – why have you given me a bin?
Composting in your garden is one of the best ways to recycle food waste. You can use your new food waste bin for food you don’t want to compost at home, such as meat and fish bones. Read more about composting at home.

I don’t want a food waste bin, can I return it?
No, we strongly recommend you recycle your food waste using the new food waste bins. The food waste bins are quick and easy to use, good for the environment and will deliver a £500,000 annual saving in the coming years. They will also save room in your black rubbish bin which will only be collected every two weeks from October 2017

Problems with the bin/liners

You delivered a food waste bin to my property, but someone has stolen it, what do I do?
You can order a new bin online by visiting: xxxx (form will be available by end of September)

I’ve been using my food waste bin since you delivered it in July, but you don’t collect it, why not?
The new food waste collection service does not start until October, so please continue putting your food waste in your black rubbish bin until then. Once the service starts you will be able to report missed collections online.

My neighbour has had a food waste bin delivered but I haven’t, what do I do?
If you haven’t received your food waste bin, please report this online at: xxx (form will be available by end of September)

I’ve received my food waste bin but it is missing the caddy/liners/leaflets
Please report this online at: XXX (form will be available by end of September)

Will you supply more caddy liners?
Your food waste bin comes with a free roll of caddy liners to help you get started using the new service. Once you’ve used them all, you will be able to buy more liners at the supermarket. You can also wrap you food waste in newspaper or kitchen towelling.

Money

How much money is this saving?
We expect the changes to waste and recycling services will deliver a £500,000 annual saving in the coming years, compared to projected costs if we didn’t make the changes. We could also be fined by the Government if recycling rates in our borough don’t increase.

How much is this costing?
We expect the changes to waste and recycling services will deliver a £500,000 annual saving in the coming years, compared to projected costs if we didn’t make the changes.

What will it cost residents?
There is no cost to residents. The new food waste service is free of charge.

Thanks for posting this @MajaHilton

With a view to being as environmentally friendly as possible, can we also wrap food waste in brown paper bags?

Hi @Brett

I don’t see why not.

Just a quick reminder that the new service starts this week.
I have been collecting my food waste this week and I have two bones - not sure how this is really reducing my rubbish foot print but I guess in two or three months I may have enough to fill the food bin!

I’d collected enough food waste over a two week period to fill the bin, and when we emptied it we found the biodegradable bin lining had, unfortunately, bio-degraded. Bit of a mess!

Is that the kitchen caddy?

As a family of four (three adults and a teenager) I have filled my caddy twice this week and have another half a caddy’s worth to go in tomorrow for collection on Tuesday. Very little actual ‘waste’ - mostly scrapings, peelings, egg shells and coffee grounds. Lots and lots of coffee grounds.

Yup - sorry, should have been clearer. How have you find the green liners? Did they stay in one piece?

The liners are fine for me, but they are only in my caddy for maybe three days, not two weeks!

Once you’ve got weekly collections it might not be a problem.

What I do have a problem with is the the fact the caddy isn’t designed to neatly hold the liner. If I pull the liner far enough over the lip of the caddy to hold, then it gets mangled and tangled in the hinge of the handles.

I’m delighted that we now have food waste collection. For those of us that can’t compost (no garden or space for a bin) this is an excellent way to get rid of it in a more environmentally friendly way. I always feel really guilty for binning things like vege peelings and coffee grounds, or (the shame) bags of salad that we’ve only got halfway through!

Great for plants. Scatter it on your flower beds. Morrisons Cafe’s give their grounds away for free for just that purpose.

To prevent your caddy liner biodegrading too quickly, try to reduce the amount of liquid that goes in i.e. really squeezing out the liduid from tea bags and coffee grains, sauces from cooked food etc. Or add a little bit of paper (tissue, newspaper, kitchen roll) in with the food which will soak up moisture.
Alternatively, tie up the bag before taking it out of the caddy, then tip the whole thing into the larger food waste bin so it the bag splits/degrades, it will all end up in the right place anyway.

Question: the garden waste bins will accept dropped fruit from fruit trees, and the food waste bins will accept old/mouldy fruit i.e. that you bought from a shop. The only difference I see is some of the dropped fruit, dropped in the first place because the maggots to to it before I picked it. Whereas shop bought fruit doesn’t usually get maggots in it, it just goes mouldy.
I don’t agree with having to pay for a garden waste bin (its free in lots of other boroughs) so can I put my dropped fruit from my pear tree in our food waste bin?

Urban (or should that be suburban) myth.

Our roses have done well with regular coffee ground scatterings. And keeps the cats from poo0ing there!

Better than without coffee grounds?

I have looked into this before as a keen gardener and coffee drinker.
The general consensus is that they do supply essential nutrients and help with soil structure esp on hard London clay. Of course there are better fertilizers!

Someone sent Starbucks grounds off to a lab
They are also acidic which helps with the alkaline clay type soils we have around here…

As always, there’s a counter-argument. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/23/coffee-grounds-are-not-good-for-plants-its-a-myth

Well of course there are always two sides but he doesn’t really offer any detailed nutritional analysis or even any PH testing results . Although I do have to admit to a certain bias as I cannot stand James Wong.

Fair enough. And I may start an experiment with grounds myself as I’ve run out of the leaf mould that made my dark and loamy soil the envy of every clay-logged gardener in South London.

We have put tea bags on our roses, supposed to help with nutrients. Also agree about the bags in the caddy, once they get a bit heavy they do slip down, but I’ve been filling up the big caddy out in the garden & will see how it fairs on Wednesday the first collection day.

Our bins were emptied on Tuesday morning and so far I have one caddy’s worth in my silver bin, a third-full recycling bin and nothing yet in my grey bin.

My kitchen bin that now takes non-food waste only is only half full. It’s noticeable how much food packaging is not recyclable. We don’t eat ready meals, but all the black trays from fresh produce are in that bin, plus plastic wrap from pasta, inner liners from biscuits and cereal etc, coffee bean and cat food pouches. I now have a separate recycling bag for any plastic that says it can be recycled with plastic bags (the shrink wrap on a multipack of tins, for example). That I will take to the supermarket and put in their bag recycling bin.

It seems like the food waste compacts itself down more when kept by itself, but that might be my imagination.

On the basis of this fairly normal week, I don’t think I’ll have any problem with the grey bin being emptied twice a week. For reference - we are three adults and one teenager. Oh, and cat and a dog (hello poop bags). The dog has been very accommodating and not pooped at home this week.

Well as the first collection failed to take the food bin and also the brown garden bin not impressed.
When called the council it seems different departments deal with different bins so now supposedto come on Friday? Given the phone lines were queued and no one has answered the email enquiry perhaps its all gone wrong, teething problems?

I’m sure there will be some teething problems. The quickest way to get a missed pick up rescheduled is to use the Fix My Street website to log it. Contacting the council directly doesn’t seem to get as quick results.

Was your whole street missed?

Yes whole street, that said we are one of very few who actually push our bins out and also return them into property.
A minor irritation but as council states that if bin is not at boundary it will not be emptied yet the collections are still done with bins retrieved from inside gardens.

On one occassion I had not pulled bin out fully, not emptied very annoying!

I saw somewhere (can’t remember where) that it really helps the refuse guys if you put your bin handles facing the road. Since I read that I can’t NOT put the bins out that way. They aren’t the most manoeuvrable of beasts.

Just checked the rules on putting you bins out and they don’t have to be out on the street, just at the edge of your boundary. So a bin half-out should have been collected. Unless it was a brown bin. As not everyone has those, the bin men won’t check inside your boundary for that.

@Wynell, how did you phone the council? We were unable to as they have a recording saying only online inquiries were accepted, for which you have to register, but the online system us not taking new registrations either.

This email address, which I got from the Sydenham Town Forum, produced results after my black bin and food hin were not emptied on Tuesday: envirocasework@lewisham.gov.uk

I take it you mean once every two weeks

We were chatting about this in the pub last night and we all said the same thing - that we wont really use the food recycling bins and our use of the grey bins remains the same. Mine is now pretty full and although we will generally be ok with the two week collection schedule there will be times when it will overflow (and they specifically will not take anything not in the bin). However we are all allotment people so I guess not representative of the populace.

I wonder if we will be able to buy the compost that Lewisham say they are making (pref at a nice local discount) or whether it is sold on at a profit for the council.

Yes, I did indeed mean every other week.

Was your grey bin emptied this week or are you coming to the end of your second week of filling it?

I think I’m going to make an effort fo buy fresh food with less non-recyclable packaging as that’s currently dominating my grey bin fill. So from the perspective of changing behaviours, that’s certainly working for me.

‭020 8314 7171‬ Is the number I got thru on ssked for bin collection

I seriously recommend using fixmystreet.com. It’s the council’s preferred method of reporting these things, since they wound up their own reporting app. You don’t need to log in, you can see progress reports, upload a photo if appropriate, post follow-ups if not resolved. Any missed collections I’ve reported this way have been collected the next day.

Don’t think it was emptied this week so we have to get through to next Tuesday - there are only two of us so it isn’t a hassle really…
I am lucky enough to grow a sizable proportion if our own food so we don’t have a lot of packaging. In fact I now bemoan the lack of carrier bags as I used to use them to bring all the muddy veg back from the plot!

Are everyone else’s food biodegradable refuse bags biodegrading prior to collection? I had to wash out both my kitchen caddy and the external food waste bin each of which had become covered in delicious “bin juice” because the biodegradable bags were leaking.

I look forward to cleaning these two new bins 52 times a year…

Some others have had that problem but I haven’t. I change over my bag every three days or so. If you’re not changing it that often, you might need to empty it before it’s full. Having said that, my outside caddy was fine with bags in it for a week.

Remember - minimise the amount of liquid in your food waste.

There’s always a chance that the free bags from Lewisham are not the best quality and replacements from the supermarket might be better.

We are still waiting for our food bins. …Hopefully they will arrive this side of Christmas

IMG_09623024×4032 2.81 MB

The street bins are feeling the pressure…

Some major teething problems with this scheme. I live in a large Victorian hose conversion, 4 x 3 bed flats on Lowther Hill. Currently we have 3 x black bins and 2 x green bins, so already inadequate for our needs. Despite a call with Lewisham bins team who told me they would deliver more green bins (and accepted that they would have to be stored on the street as there isn’t any more space), this hasn’t happened and I’ve now been through two weeks of overfilled bins which stink. @MajaHilton this really isn’t working for mansion block conversions. Please can you advise how we can resolve this? The environmental health team have been both lecture-y and unhelpful and have failed to deliver on the promise of new green bins.

That doesn’t bode well does it?

This is on my street. This is a tenanted property and they put their bins inside but now it’s also overflowing

IMG_20171006_1750213024×4032 4.69 MB

Just to add to the gaiety of the nation, it looks like our bins and our neighbours bins did not get emptied. None of us seem to have food waste bins either.
I’ve used the website and it suggests we should have - despite us being on a red route - so I’ve logged the items as missing. I also note the website was timing out on the actual bin collection day - I’ve just been able to use it today.

Hi @Irmani_Smallwood

I am not familiar with your street as it is in Crofton Park ward, and we even have different MPs. The best suggestion I have is for you to contact one of your local councillors who will know your Road and who can request any changes if needed or find out a workable solution.

To find contact details on the link sorted by wards

http://councilmeetings.lewisham.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?FN=WARD&VW=LIST&PIC=0

Your councillors are
Cllr Barnham
Cllr Kennedy
Cllr Morrison

Managing well so far. I guess it’s like the 5p shopping bag charge. You need to be subtlety forced to recycle.

Yes, the caddy is RUBBISH (pun intended). Locking mechanism doesn’t work. When you open the lid after it rains, the water on top falls inside. Genius.

As for rubbish being dumped on the streets - that’s part and parcel of living in London. It’s cheaper for the Council to respond to dumping of waste than it is to actually pick it up from everyone’s homes (eg: fly tipping of furniture).

Well , got our food caddy emptied, Trouble was all on the pavement outside the gate?? Seems the dustman like to empty 2 caddys or bins in to 1 to save them having to take 2 of to the back of the truck??
At this rate the foxes &rats are going to have a field day ?? Calls or e-mails to the council dont appear to get any where. Very frustrating.

Well missed our brown bin and our food bin council said sorry will pick up Friday called at 4pm they said sorry will all be sorted next week.
10am this morning both bins emptied yay!

Just a note looks like food goes in same receptacle as garden waste, so no feeding the pigs (swill) then.

Yep they have some guy walk down the street before the truck comes trying to empty 2 in to 1. They’ve always done that with the black bins. But doing it with the food waste bins? Geezus.

Try that email address I posted above. I got a reply pretty quickly.

We still haven’t got any food waste bins (or leaflets, or any of the bits and bobs that go with them). Also been requesting a recycling bin for the last two years but that’s another story. Black bins very full today.

Damn - someone has nicked our big green recycling bin or it ended up getting recycled in some sort of meta way. Then a neighbour got all shirty as we bought in one left outside our house by the bin men which turned out to be hers, not ours…

I think in general the changes are good ones. I use the food waste bin a bit more than I thought I would, not a lot mind but it does force me to think before throwing stuff in the kitchen bin. It will take some time to get it into everyone’s mindset and there will be problems for some but we will all get used to it.

Bit of a mare for people who haven’t yet got their food bins but are already on a bi-weekly grey bin collection. Any sign of the council helping them out?

My in-laws have had bi-weekly non-recyclable collections where they live for years and have become very adept at efficiently filling that bin. It might seem trivial, but simple things like flattening and folding non-recyclable wrappers etc instead of scrunching them can make a big difference. I’ve also been squeezing the air out of all the bin bags before I put them in the bin, and not knotting them tightly. It occurs to me I might not even need bin liners for most waste going in the grey bin. Pouring the waste in loose and letting it settle will make more room. So far I’m on track to have a full but not overflowing grey bin come collection day.

Living in a purpose built small block of flats who have individual black/green bins and are not being supplied with the food waste bins I contacted the council to verify what was happening as some of the communication was misleading and was advised me that nothing was changing for us and we would still be getting a weekly collection of general waste. When I queried how they knew which addresses to collect from I was told they have a list of all the relevant properties. However surprise surprise the general waste was not collected last week!

Paint your house number on the bins add road as well for extra security. That way you can always retrieve your own bins. I think everyone in Wynell road has marked their bins.

Same here. We are in Brockley Rise. On the first day of collection I had a look down the road to see if we were alone, and it did not appear so - lots of black bins also put out.

Still we have a reference number and an email saying our food bin will be delivered before this starts. Hmmm. Some of the black bins look full already, so if they are not collected, well they are going to end up dumped somewhere, most likely street bins I guess.

I’ll be generous and say it’s early days, but as someone who was initially sceptical of the changes, it’s not the best start.

No problems on Cranston Rd that I can see. Our grey bin is only half full most weeks anyway so I don’t think we’ll have any issues. Good advice upthread on properly compacting recycling and not putting liquids in the small food waste caddy. You could also try popping a kitchen towel in the bottom as a liner. We’ve had no problems with our green bags disintegrating and we’ve only been decanting them into the bigger bin about twice a week.

Same story on half of Codrington Hill, too. I contacted the council 3 weeks before the changeover date to tell them that the food bins still hadn’t been delivered. I got a case number but since then - nothing.

My wife called the council last Tuesday (because we’re not due a black bin collection until this week under the new rules) and was told to put the food waste in the black bin as per usual since (in the words of the council person) “we’re aware that many residents don’t yet have their food bins, and arrangements are in place for their black bins to be collected this week”.

Of course, there was no black bin collection.

I am confidenly expecting that we will still be without a food bin before this week’s collection, and that when I go to retrieve the black bin from wherever it finally ends up on my street after the bin lorry has been, there will be a snotty note stuck to it telling me that it should not be used for food waste.

Why can Lewisham never seem to get this sort of thing right?

We live in a purpose built block of flats with communal bins. All the literature states that nothing will change for our collections, but I cannot get an answer from Lewisham Council as to whether our collection days remain the same or not as the information on the website shows the whole of our road (a mixture of houses, conversions and purpose built blocks) as having the fortnightly bin collections.

I don’t mind the two-week grey bin collection cycle as we typically recycle most of our waste, but the food bin is such a palava and I question whether its having much of an impact on recycling levels. It certainly is added hassle. The small indoor bin frequently stinks the kitchen out when it is opened, even after only a few hours following a bag change and I still haven’t located a decent spot to put the damned thing…

I was worried that my kitchen caddy would be stinky but it’s fine. The only thing that makes it smell nasty is any trimmings of raw meat, poultry or fish, which will start to smell nasty within a day. Everything else going in is either vegetable trimmings or cooked scrapings from plates. Same as my main bin before I stopped using it for food.

How is the kitchen caddy smelling of food any different to a normal kitchen bin smelling of food? It’s in the same room and the same contents. The caddy should smell up the kitchen less as you empty it more often.

Not being an expert in food decomposition, I am not exactly sure…

Perhaps it is due to the concentration of food stuffs together in a smaller container not being absorbed or deflected by discarded food wrap, foil or the odd piece of kitchen roll. Perhaps it is because the small caddy is further off the ground and closer to my nasal passage. Perhaps as time has gone on and I have become more irritated with the process, I have also become more susceptible to the smell.

Questions, questions.

Bottom line is I think it smells worse than the kitchen bin. I don’t particularly like this enforced and additional hassle and I doubt it makes a huge amount of difference in the scheme of things.

Genuine question: How much difference would it have to make to be worth your hassle?

Personally I haven’t noticed the kitchen caddy smelling any worse than my regular bin, in fact I think it smells less because I empty it more often.
I also have a compost caddy with a charcoal liner in the lid which is very good at absorbing smells, so if I do find the kitchen caddy starts to smell I will try something similar.
I find my main kitchen bin is much cleaner and easier to empty because it’s only packaging.
The kitchen caddy is very easy to take outside to the silver bin and the liners haven’t disintegrated so far.
The main issue for me is where to store the caddy in the kitchen - but I’ll work something out eventually!

Does anyone have a definitive answer on whether we can put black plastic food trays in the recycling? They are not excluded on the Lewisham website, but I keep hearing they are not recyclable.

Definitive… no, but I had never worried about them before. The page below mentions ‘fruit punnets’, which I think is similar, and does not list anything similar under ‘what you can’t recycle’.

https://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/wasterecycle/recycling/Pages/What-can-i-put-in-my-recycling-bin.aspx

Fruit punnets are normally clear plastic.

Have looked into this further, it seems the trouble is at the recycling plants where black plastic doesn’t get properly sorted. But in theory as a type 1 plastic I’d assume we’re allowed to put them in our green bins.

I’m genuinely confused how this is more hassle than a black bin? As for kitchen space, we put our recycling in one of these http://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/uk/html/onlineshop/rub/bConvertBin.php and the caddy sits on top of it. (This is in a v. small kitchen too!!)

Not much point in any of this when the sloppy bin operative spills the contents of a food bin on the road then walks in it as the lorry moves forward!

I think we need to flag this up to Lewisham. If not everyone is bagging their food waste, the habit of tipping one bin into another as they go along is not going to work.

If anyone sees it happening and can get a photo, do. Then log it via Fix My Street or tweet Lewisham Environment.

Previous routine - open kitchen bin, scrape food into bin, close bin, deal with plate. Take bin outside when full - perhaps up to three times a week depending on volumes.

New routine - locate daft caddy, put plate down whilst lifting up daft caddy from floor in order to open the daft handle, scrape food bits into daft caddy whilst grimacing from the smell of concentrated food stuffs in close proximity to one’s nose shortly after the consumption of an evening meal, put plate down, close daft caddy lid and daft handle to stop the smell, place daft caddy back on floor, deal with plate, empty the daft caddy once or twice a day into outside even dafter larger sister caddy - repeat routine as with small daft caddy of lifting and opening larger daft handle system, grimacing again with the admittedly less concentrated smell but at the same time worrying about all those food liquids that Rachael said I should have minimised (squeezed out of the foods?? With my hands?) beforehand apparently to avoid the daft bags from splitting inside the even dafter larger caddy, closing the daft handle system, and then finally, and rather dejectedly, plodding back inside house.

Watching as two days later the bin men arrive, open the even dafter larger caddy to tip into the back of the truck and grimace once again (I am clearly grimacing a lot these days) as they manage to spill some of the contents onto the road, something that hadn’t happened at all in the previous five years.

Think to oneself, am I alone in considering this is futile and a complete waste of my time? Seemingly yes, given the reactions so far on se23life…

Perhaps I am turning into that grumpy old man rather sooner than I had previously thought.

My routine: place caddy on counter to lob in off cuts and peelings in while preparing food. Leave open as there is no smell and reflect how much easier it is than opening and closing the main bin while cooking.

Close caddy, leave on counter, eat dinner. Open caddy, leave open as I scrape plates and generally clean up after dinner. Close caddy, stow beside main kitchen bin until next needed. Empty small caddy every third day.

I don’t know what you are putting in your caddy to make it stink so bad, @Jerry.

There’s quite a simple way to avoid loads of liquid in the food waste that doesn’t involve using your hands (?) just strain it through a sieve or using the edge of a pan lid… exactly what we were doing to avoid having liquid in the old bins (which inevitably would find its way out of the bin bag otherwise).

Have you got your food bins yet? Ours are still not here.

At least the black bins were collected today. I had a look down the road again, and only saw one food bin out of about 10 addresses so I suspect we’re still not alone, in contrast to the side streets where virtually every house had the food bin out.

Nope - we (and our neighbours) are also still food bin - less.

Still no further response from Lewisham to my original (now 4 week old) request to resolve the situation, either…

Please can someone explain the food bin bags to me? Do you put a small bag in the caddy and then tie it up and put it in the kerbside bin? Is the kerbside bin supposed to have a bag of it’s own too? Or just lots of little tied-up bags inside?

Related topic, with photos of instruction leaflets:

Many thanks Chris. I couldn’t find the instruction leaflet and it’s not on Lewisham’s website.

Looks as though our foxes are enjoying this new sport. left our little kitchen caddy outside overnight by the back door (yes I know, it’s supposed to be in the kitchen) , it disappeared completely. Eventually found it in a bush half way down the garden a day later, with contents (chicken bones in a bag) nowhere to be seen.

Little devils!

Clearly someone on Benson Rd didn’t get the memo

Clearly number 24 really doesn’t care.

I suspect there are teething problems, for people and the council alike. If you’ve always been used to weekly collections, it might take some adjustments for the bi-weekly collections. If you are going over, where do you store your rubbish? You can’t store it outside as the foxes will rip it apart. We use to fill up our black bins full each week, when we got he bigger recycling bins this helped, and the brown bins also now help so we’ve managed ok.

Once the bins are overflowing I think they are normally not collected, however I hope for the next few weeks they will be. I’m not sure what people are supposed to do in this circumstance to get rid of the rubbish.

I have a bit more sympathy for the bins in the photos above than I might normally. I would not leave my bin like that but different people have different circumstances and you can get caught up, especially the first few weeks of a change.

And as I have posted in this tread we are still waiting for our food bins!

As an aside I like the system they have in Paris I witness this year. One day (each week I think, maybe each month) you can leave whatever you like pretty much outside your house on the street and it’s collected (furniture, mattresses etc). I think some is recylced by people taking it, but I think it also reduces flytipping for some items. It does not look amazing all the time I’m told, but seems to work well.

I gave the council a ring this week and it turns out there are loads of streets who haven’t had their silver bins yet. The poor woman on the phone described it as a ‘nightmare’. As we (along with most people on our road) have never had a green bin either I requested one of these. They’re on order and will be with us ‘shortly’ (8 weeks when I pushed for a definition of ‘shortly’). I’m not impressed by people on here ‘bin shaming’ those leaving bin bags by their black bins. That’s unless you can come up with any other suggestions for what people should be doing with their rubbish with no green or silver bins (hearing ‘drive it to the tip’ was a little grating as we don’t have a car…)

Update! We’ve now got a sticker on our bins saying they won’t take it away because there’s food waste in it. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Will local councillors be any help in this situation?

FYI email sent to cllrs:

Despite asking for a silver bin for weeks we still haven’t got one. The woman I spoke to at the council said they were on order, lots of streets didn’t have them and it was a ‘nightmare’. I’ve also been requesting a green bin for a very long time (over the course of two years) and am still waiting. Again, the woman at Envirocall said they’d be about 8 weeks and were on order.

Today I’ve found that the bin men have slapped a notice on our bin saying they won’t collect it because it’s got food waste in it.

Attaching a tag to a bin, implying that the fault is ours for not making use of a food waste bin Lewisham has yet to deliver, is incredibly poor customer service and strongly suggests a lack of communication between departments.

Do you have any ideas on how we sort this one out? There’s overflowing bins up and down Wynell Road (and across Lewisham) and with no provision of silver bins I have no idea what the council plans to do about it, beyond penalising those who can’t now properly dispose of their rubbish though no fault of their own

I’m extremely disappointed and upset as I support the idea of food waste collections wholeheartedly and can’t help feeling that this whole thing has been spectacularly mishandled.

I’d like to make a formal complaint, who might I best address this to?

@jmoney - that’s an intolerable situation and I hope you get some help with it soon. If I were you I’d be tempted to put the grey bin out for collection anyway, with a large-print note on it pointing out you have no food bin. And I find it staggering that you’ve been asking for a green bin for YEARS and haven’t got one. What on earth is the excuse they give for that?

A couple of things strike me:

1. Did Lewisham explicitly say they wouldn’t collect grey bins with food waste in them?
2. Isn’t it much too early in the process to be refusing to empty grey bins with food in, if that’s the rule? Even without the issue of people not having food bins, surely there should be a few months grace where people get warnings, rather than immediate refusal to empty the bin.

No good one. The issue is is that no one on our side of Wynell Road seems to have a green bin, so when we briefly did have one it didn’t hang around long enough for us to paint our number on it. It’s become a bit of a freeforall and our beloved numbered black bin has gone walkabout as well. I gave up on the green bin requests for a while as honestly we could get everything into the black bin… until now.

1. All the tag said was ‘we couldn’t empty your food waste bin’ erm… no s**t Sherlock.
2. You’d think so wouldn’t you. It’s been two weeks and no bin collection so am assuming they don’t think so.

Maybe try calling environmental health as this is turning into an environmental issue isn’t it?

This is a good idea. I emailed them last week about overflowing bins and bin bags and they were at least very responsive and said they would look into it. Worth a shot.

Let’s hope they do!

They messed up our collection again but once again emailing got an immediate response. Last time they collected the unemptied rubbish the next day so fingers crossed.

Still waiting for our food bin…maybe they recycled the bin itself by mistake.

Enjoyed my walk through Ladywell this morning, post food bin collection. Bins thrown on the pavement willy nilly. Lids open. The flimsy design doesn’t really lend itself to being tossed about as it appears they are.

Screenshot_20171018-1316251080×1920 1.22 MB

Week 3 of the new regime.
Stiil no food bin.
Phoned the council (again) - was told to put grey bin out (again) as “arrangements have been made to collect your bins”.
Bins weren’t collected (again)…

Our bins are now empty! Very exciting. Still no green or silver bins though.

Yesterday, on my street , I witnessed one fella who was working the ‘even’ side of the street literally lobbing the grey bins back to the side of the street that he had picked them up from. His colleagues on the ‘odd’ side were putting them back pretty tidily (or at at least not just chucking them in the vague direction of the houses). Maybe he was having a bad day?!

Anyway I emailed envirocasework@lewisham.gov.uk and they got back to me, very promptly this morning to apologise and let me know they’d be speaking to the team about this. So worth getting touch with them if you have any issues.

Sigh. Why do people dump their huge TV/other boxes on the street, then leave them there when the Council doesn’t pick them up. Take a hint maybe? Cut them up like everyone else?

Hate reporting people who live in the local area but geez some people are inconsiderate.

@Hollow The council say they will take large boxes too big for the green bin when they can. I always stack them behind my green bin when I put it out and they take them. So maybe not residents at fault if they’ve been left behind. Unless they’ve left polystyrene and other non-recyclable packing in the box.

Really? All this time I never knew that. Haha!

Come to think of it, there was a lot of polystyrene too. But who knows. I’ll just leave it then.

I verified this with the Council shortly after moving here as we had a particularly high number of boxes to recycle. They also recommended collapsing, then using some string or tape to bind them so they don’t get scattered or blown away while waiting for collection.

The rubbish situation with our neighbours is getting really bad. It is a tenanted property with 8 households and for the past few months the front yard is getting littered with rubbish – things strewn about include open nappies, packages with rotten fruit etc. Is there anything we can do through the council to pressure them to clean it up and keep it clean? I have contacted environment case work Lewisham who said they would pay a visit and also contacted the agent who manages the property who sent a letter to the residents about it, but looks like nobody has taken any action/even seems to care about it. My neighbors and I are getting increasingly frustrated to see this eyesore everyday from our windows and also worried about pest infestations this might result in

IMG_20171120_0857512058×2326 1.95 MB

What about environmental health? We had the sane problem a few years back with a neighbour…A man came from Lewisham but said because it was on their property all he could do was put a note through their door reminding them to keep tidy etc…fortunately it did work. The only other solution I suppose is to get a letter from a solicitor addressed to the owner as well as the tenant. We would have had to do that if the other solution hadn’t worked.

Yeah. Could be difficult. Last year, I reported a sizeable and growing fly tip on that stretch of Sunderland Road which is also part of the South Circular. But as the heap of trash, rotting food, stinking diapers was not “on” public property all they could do was try and contact the owners and ask them to do something about it.

Do you have a landlord you could engage with?

Still no bin so maybe it won’t be this side of Christmas after all! - let’s see if we have more luck with Santa, I’ll write him a letter which will probably have a higher likelihood of some action. Are we alone or is anyone else also still waiting?

No, you are not alone!

Still waiting for our food refuse bin. Now 11 weeks since we first alerted Lewisham that we hadn’t received it.

Repeated calls/tweets/visits to the council web page have all been in vain - the lack of response from the council has been total.

What a disgrace.

Do put a request through your councillor. I am told that we now have bins in stock.

If you have a brown garden bin put your food waste in it! Because that is what is happening both the Brown garden and the Larger Silver food bin are emptied into the same lorry.
Someone doing a survey from LC asking if we were happy with the sorting of our recycling confirmed this was the case. I have also heard a rumouf that it is sll incinerated but not confirmed thst to be the case.

Hi Maja. Thank you for the update and advice.

I don’t want to have a go at you as you are one of the few councillors regularly on here and always helpful

So without wishing to shoot the messenger, I would like to respectfully ask if you and your fellow councillors are looking into why the roll out has not been a success and more importantly why the system to report issues is effectively unmanaged - what is the point of it - if the solution is for everyone to contact their local councillor why is this not the stated advice on the website.

Hi @oakr

It is sometimes hard to explain things whilst not sounding like an apologist for the Council. Everyone who has experienced a missed collection has every right to feel upset, angry or whichever way they deal when a service fails. I will help anyone resolve these and other issue the best I can.

Changing collections has been a huge change. All the teams have received new areas. Certainly the reports in my ward are in about 5 roads which I assume are the new areas for the teams.

You will appreciate that with any large change there will be teething problems, and the challenge is to quickly learn from them. When someone is patient and doesn’t report the problem as soon as it happens, the learning process doesn’t necessarily follow. Initially we had only 20 reports of missed collections. I assume that people simply did not complain.

Emailing Envirocasework@lewisham.gov.uk is probably the easiest way to make a complaint. Unfortunately like every shared email inbox where ther are few people accessing it, it can happen that an email can be missed. This is not trying to justify it happening but is what I believe can happen. If an email is not responded to or if the things don’t happen, send again the email. That is what I would have done.

Like all councillors I have sent few emails myself to the above address and none of my emails got missed. It makes me cross but I think at this stage it is more important to get teams working effectively by not missing bits from their schedule.

There were also some issues on scheduling and communication between departments. I won’t go into detail and can leave it to everyone’s imagination. It probably happened. I also believe there are great efforts to rectify it.

Taking everything into account I have certainly seen a large reduction in people containing me with collection issues, even though I have been saying to let me know. We can all judge the success of it if our recycling rates are improved and we managed to save some pennies along the way. I think milestones at 3 and 6 months will be of interest to me.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for that helpful update. Week by week it is getting better is my experience.

I do believe there is a rule that bins need to be placed on the pavement outside the property boundary to be collected?
I have complied with this for 5 years and to date the only household that does it. None of my neighbours push their bins out and the bin men enter the property to retrieve them. There is also a rule that once emptied the bins should be returned to within the property boundaries again this does happen in days sometimes just before the collection day when one presumes it is to be filled?

It would be interesting for the council to clarify this and perhaps not empty any bins not pushed out and perhaps clear away bins not retrieved 48 hours after emptying. Sounds harsh but unfortunately some people are intellectually challenged and only respond to such action.

Hi Maja

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

To be clear though, my issue is not missed collections (though we have had that for no reason previously - in fairness generally the binmen do a good job with our bins and we’ve not had many issues) - it is the fact that we have still not received the food bins we are meant to be using for food waste, many months after we have been told we should no longer put this in our black bins.

We have emailed the official channel twice, and got automated responses to both of those and nothing else. The number to call appears to have been taken down.

We have also complained directly last week and as of yet not received a response.

I do appreciate there can be teething problems with any change, I don’t accept the lack of response received. I also don’t accept the argument re the shared mailboxes. I started my life as a 1st line support technician, and it’s not difficult to put something in place to ensure all queries are dealt with. Even without using other software (of which there are many, and many free), it’s not hard to put a process in place to ensure all queries have been taken. If the support team I had started out had treated our customers like this we would have been decimated, but for the council it seems there is no recourse for anyone and nothing happens.

I’ve had very few interactions with the council but all have been poor.

Anyway, I will say you appear to be a shining light in a sea of mediocrity - that may be monumentally unfair but is my experience.

You don’t need to answer my post - I can feel you are frustrated but also I don’t want to waste any more of your time - thank you for being helpful and I hope you don’t feel I am attacking you personally.

Have a good weekend.

@Wynell I believe the brown bins need to be on the pavement, all others can be on your property (but towards the front if you want them emptied)

Not only do we not have a food waste bin yet, I have just noticed this morning that our black bin has a large “no food or garden waste” sticker on it. I almost think that must have been done this morning; it’s such an obvious sticker I would have seen it earlier otherwise.
I am very unimpressed.

From the Council service standards document:

Wheelie bins and sacks must be moved to the inside edge of your property and be clear of obstructions.

Please put the returned bin back to its regular position on your property by the evening on your collection day.

Lewisham council executive have been a nightmare in every single interaction I’ve had with them. When I first came here I waited months for a recycling bin, I now still don’t have a food bin and graffiti is left for months on end.

Their website uses very old technology and is regularly unable to process requests. As for the unanswered emails and phonecalls implementing a basic ticketing system would be near free.

Its difficult to complain to councillors given there’s more to life than bins and services such social care, schools etc. must take priority but I’m hopeful a new CEO next year will bring a breath of fresh air to Lewisham Council so some of the basics improve.

I have a question: the block waste was collected today. We have general waste bins and recycling bins. All of them were emptied today. Are there two types of tracks that collect general waste and recycling waste separately or everything goes in one track? If it is the last option, what is the point to separate waste if it all goes in one track? Or the track has 2 different sections for two types of waste?

All my bins are collected on the same day but by different trucks for each type of bin.

Thank you, we probably have the same then.

I recently bought a set of new baking/roasting tins. Can the old ones be put in the green recycling bin?

Scrap metal is on the recycling naughty list on the Lewisham website, so it’s either the tip or the black bin.

But it says you can put biscuit tins in the recycling? Is that very different to a baking tray?

I agree with you! Surely they are all metal! Is it something to do with the coating on the tins, or if they are marked a lot? Doesn’t make sense does it

Perhaps the thickness of the metal is the issue for the recycling sorting and processing. A biscuit tin would be about the same thickness as a food can, but baking trays would be thicker. Also the biscuit tin would probably be made of the same sort of metal as food cans, but baking trays can be different types of metal and with different coating / processing on the metal.