Dratted purdah!

I'd have no problems with a smaller bin, in principle - as a family of four we rarely get up to even a third full in our bin. Admittedly, all are out of nappies, but still. It's just, if it ain't broke...

As of today I dont care what size my bin is as long as they dont come to collect it (noisily) at 05:40 again.

I complained about this once before and was told that they cant have been in my street at that sort of time as they aren't allowed to collect before (I think) 06:30. So I'm a (tired) liar then.

Apparently the Council have ' clarified' that this is a pilot scheme in selected streets. Not what it said on the leaflet unfortunately. They said if I didn't like it I would get my 240l bin back. Nice. But let them try taking it off me in the first place.

I'm with you, JUST let them try and take it away. ps when were WE as residents consulted, wish "bright spark" in the Council came up with this dumb idea.

How would they like it if we all decided to withhold 25% of our Council Tax as they are reducing bin sizes by 25%?

ps. What are the local councilliors doing and did they approve this? Can't wait till the door knocking starts for the election.

Where's the frigging CONSULTATION??????????????????

I was actually really glad, despite having four children, to get the smaller bin. We have a tiny front garden and the two giant bins are just too much. We definitely need the big green one, but the smaller black one suits us fine.[/i]

I'm with Roz on this one. I'm all for people getting the choice to have smaller bins but people must have the right to have larger bins. If the council were able to recycle all plastic packaging and tetrapaks, and organise compostable collections separately then I might have some sympathy for a forced move to smaller bins.

Perhaps we could organise a bin swapping system on se23.com where people whose large bins are replaced can swap with other people who would be glad to get a smaller bin!

I've now had the leaflet round and as a box user, I'm slightly pacified to see that the old bin will remain, but with a new green lid, together with the newer smaller general waste bin, and that I can also keep my old green boxes too.

What did, however, make my blood boil, is that the council does not get anyone literate to proof read their leaflets - in this context it should be "affect" (verb) as opposed to "effect" (noun and verb with different meaning).

The bin thieves (sorry, council) are out again. Down London Road in Forest Hill delivering tiny bins and removing the big ones. I have chained my bins together. Let them try to take them away

Unfortunately we now have a smaller bin. And a bit of a saga.

Now that the elections are over I'm afraid our gloves are off on this subject.

We managed to fill our green bin almost totally last week however clearly some items in it were unacceptable to the Council as we got a leaflet saying so and they refused to take away any of our recycled rubbish at all. We looked into the bin and found not only had they not take away any of it some passing pedestrian had dumped the remains of their takeway in it. We have therefore been refused a recycling collection last week because of something outside our control hence still have a full bin and nowhere to put our recycled rubbish this week.

We also had one ordinary rubbish bag left over last week so left it beside the bin on bin day. The collectors refused to take it so we now have a very old bag containing week old used nappies in this bin. Its a good thing its still fairly cold as the smell would otherwise be awful. We now have additional pressure on our bin as we have technically even less space for our rubbish, hence do not know what we are supposed to with the bags of nappies this week (we now put them out the back in secure foxproof storage until Wednesday morning).

Any ideas on a postcard (recycled card only please). I will be writing to our local councillors on the subject and inviting them round.On recycled paper of course. Its all laughable given that we are fairly diligent on the recycling front anyway and on many occasions completely fill up our bin as we did last week. Lewishams very short list on acceptable recycling items is part of the problem as is their fascist approach to larger households. Of course we are going to have more rubbish than most homes in our street which mostly have empty nesters/young professionals/single people.

Lewisham are doing well on the recycling front which was clearly part of the electoral strategy this time but all in all, people should be given time to adjust their habits and the needs of different families taken into consideration.

Good grief! Our green bin was collected and emptied 10 minutes ago! Someone is clearly paying attention.

Well i've now got 3 bins - a big green one, a big black one and a smaller black one! In Devonshire road yesterday they were busy replacing the lids on large black bins with green ones and increasing the number of bins overall. The block of 6 flats nearby now have effectively 6 smaller black bins and 6 big green ones (they only had 2 green ones before).