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.