Consultation on proposed changes to rubbish collection

[Robin Orton]

I don't think anyone's posted about this yet, have they?

http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/w ... anges.aspx

[The Clown]

Thanks for posting this. I have completed the survey and added my thoughts to the comments box within the survey as follows:

What we have currently works, but appreciate the need for compliance.
Bromley segregate their waste and the front gardens look an absolute mess, it has spoiled the neighbourhood.
Please don't go to boxes, like the ones used here as the rubbish just ends up all over the street. It would need to remain wheely bins (perhaps 3 slimline ones?).
It would also be to the councils benefit to offer cheaper special item collection services to reduce fly-tipping.
Buying garden waste sacks worked really well - the problem was when you closed the library. You just need to agree for local businesses to sell the sacks. The community library were willing to do this but the issue was the exchange of the cash.
Fortnightly collections will create smell and the build up of waste. I strongly object to this.
We already have pest control problems with foxes and other pests.

[Ghlpc]

My sister lives in South Norwood, which I think is Croydon council.

They have fortnightly collection, which is a nightmare with overflowing bins along their street. Foxes have a field day.

There is a sense of irony in councils talking about waste reduction....

[alywin]

Bromley segregate their waste and the front gardens look an absolute mess, it has spoiled the neighbourhood.
Please don't go to boxes, like the ones used here as the rubbish just ends up all over the street. It would need to remain wheely bins (perhaps 3 slimline ones?).

That's a bit of an over-generalisation. It's always going to depend on the householder. My front garden looks fine, even with a dustbin and 3 recycling bins in it, and certainly no worse than the 3-wheelybin ones further in towards Sydenham. But I did walk up the road the other night less than 12 hours before the fortnightly general rubbish collection was due, and I'll admit the stench from some of the wheelybins was pretty disgusting. (NB: as I've mentioned before, Bromley does not support wheelybins because they claim they simply encourage people to produce more waste, so these were privately-supplied ones). But then, I wonder what people had been putting in them. If, as I suspected, they dumped all their food waste in there and left it there for up to 15 days in mid-"summer", rather than put it in the weekly food waste collection, then it's hardly surprising. Plus, how on earth do you clean out a wheelybin satisfactorily, if they're too heavy to invert? Some waste might have been in there for months, and then had all that rain mixed in with it.

The "rubbish going all over the street" can occasionally be a problem, but that's because Bromley were too cheapskate and stopped providing lids for the boxes. Can you imagine the poor binmen having to pick up crates of totally sodden paper because it's rained overnight since the papers were put out? Those boxes are pretty heavy already when they're full of paper.

Anyway, I can't comment properly because I don't know either the existing situation or the proposals: this is just my experience with Bromley's system.

[The Clown]

Interesting to get another perspective. I learned from the survey was that the segregation would allow for paper waste to become income generating.
I hope it gets some additional considered responses / ideas, so that we end up with a service that is better for the environment and provides a clean & tidy solution.
I also think that we all need to work harder to reduce waste generation in the first place.
I recycle what I can but I still seem to generate a lot of waste each week. Not food waste though, Im very good at eating up my tea!

[alywin]

You mean the paper isn't currently collected separately from anything else?

I should maybe point out that Bromley has recently reduced its waste paper collection from weekly to fortnightly because the amount collected has gone down and it's not economically viable to do it weekly any more.

[The Clown]

We just have a big green bin for everything recycled and a small for general waste

[Hissing Syd]

Thanks for posting this.

I really don't see any value in putting resources behind food waste collection - other than bones there is nothing of that sort that I put in my bin, everything goes to compost. I appreciate we're all different and not everyone has a garden, but small waste like this is much, much easier for an individual to dispose of than say, bulky garden waste.

Perhaps I'm being naive but when things are so very tight, surely something like Lewisham Life should be the first to go; there must be significant costs in producing and distributing it, when in many households it will just go straight in the bin.