Think yourselves lucky you just got the sticker and weren't at home at the time. Our ceremonious and over demonstrative sticker sticking was accompanied by a patronising lecture on recycling delivered to us in the manner one would normally speak to small children.
Today however we (along with all other Lewisham residents) have received notification that our 240 l bin will very shortly be replaced with a 180 litre bin in an attempt to encourage more recycling.

I have therefore composed a letter to the Council as follows;

Dear XXX,

Thank you for your notification that you are to shortly replace our 240l standard refuse bin for one holding 180l. This is a reduction of 25%.
The idea is to encourage people to recycle more. Whilst this may work in some cases, from our perspective as well as being an illogical and misguided move, this generic ie one size fits all approach will give us considerable problems as we are a family of 5 with three children currently in disposable nappies ( 20 nappies per day = 140 per week- -and that's before any temporarily increased output due to illness) and hence we can barely fit everything in as it stands. In addition to nappies we have considerable output in the form of cotton wool, baby wipes, baby milk cartons and tubs etc, which are not recyclable. Our bin is usually overflowing by the Monday morning and we often have to ask neighbours to help out (our collection day is Wednesday).

We also currently diligently recycle everything we can , despite the current limitations on what Lewisham considers to be recyclable in comparison with many other boroughs, an issue itself. Our green bin is usually more than 50% full. We have a home shredder for letters and documents, the contents of which goes into our green bin.
In addition we have a home composter/wormery in the garden into which all suitable materials are placed such as eggshells, egg boxes, vegetable peelings etc and we also have another composter for grass cuttings. Overall therefore, we believe that we are doing are very best to minimise our refuse output, and that this move by Lewisham can only result in our general rubbish having to either lie on top of the bin or being left to the side of the bin and risk being ripped open by foxes and or rodents. We do not wish to impose such a thing on ourselves, our neighbours, or our local environment, therefore we ask that Lewisham carefully reconsider their decision and start perhaps with a more positive inducements to recycle such as free wormeries (some can now be kept indoors and in small flats), a voluntary scheme, and/or some discretion in the cases of larger families. It seems illogical that people's needs are not taken into account in some way and that single person households in our street will have the same rubbish allowance as a family of five. We do after all pay a considerable Council Tax whilst single person households pay a reduced amount.

In case and before anyone considers it appropriate to remind me of the generous local authority £30 allowance per child towards cloth nappies and poses the obvious question, let me say that ;
1)the acquisition of cloth nappy packs requires an initial capital outlay of at least £300 per child, for us nearly £1000.
2)there are considerable hidden costs of washing and drying. (Line drying is not always possible especially with such a tight turnaround time hence a tumble dryer is a necessity)

Finally, if this idea proceeds, I would like someone to tell me what we are supposed to do when our rubbish no longer fits into our reduced bin capacity and when our neighbours can no longer accommodate our overspill? Perhaps the Council could consider a separate and dedicated disposal service for nappies?

If the latter I would only be too pleased to drop our used nappies off at the Town Hall in order to save further Council expenditure- just let me know the precise location.

Yours,

R