food waste collection

[sherlomi]

Last night put my food waste bin at garden gate and had to laugh really. About six sloppy little bags
at bottom of grey bucket! The fact is in the leaflet that arrived inside the grey bucket it states that
the food waste will be used as compost. How can you compost the scrapings of dinner plates that
have had cooked foods including meat on them? Can someone enlighten me on this as I am sure I am
right. Also kept up half the night with our dog barking at foxes sniffing around the little grey nightmare.
Full of flies when I went to it yesterday and wonder what it will be like in the hot summer months.
But most importantly - you cant make compost out of cooked foods. What a waste of everyones time.

[robbieduncan]

Perhaps you can’t compost them at home. I suspect an industrial food digester can handle it just fine

[whittler]

Well, in theory you CAN compost food waste (including meat, bones etc) on a domestic scale with one of these babies http://www.hotbincomposting.com/....but it might not be something everyone would want to do due to size, price and the attention and commitment it needs to keep it running smoothly!

The food waste collected by the council is treated with a similar system (aerobic bacterial digestion, as robbieduncan says), but on an industrial scale and it produces compost which returns valuable nutrients to the soil and (in theory) over time reduces the need for chemical fertilizers.

I do have a Hotbin, as it happens (but i am a self-confessed, obsessive composting nut), and it does indeed work very well, but as it's not at home and is at my allotment i decided that unless i can monitor it very closely to ensure it hits and maintains the 60+degree target needed to break down meat, fat, bones etc quickly, i'd rather not take the (low) risk of critters damaging an expensive bit of kit! I do get it to between 40 and 60 degrees most of the time and i am stockpiling some wonderful compost to use on my plot for the next growing season, generated much more quickly than in a traditional heap (but i have one of those too, of course!).

I am putting only bones and a few bits of leftover meat in the food collection bin a week (we don't waste much in our house), but i'm pleased to have the opportunity to do that, rather than chuck it in the general rubbish.

[sophie]

Has your food waste bin been collected though? Ours hasn’t for the 2nd week. I will check with my neighbours to see if theirs was taken today although it hadn’t been last week.

[sherlomi]

Yes, food waste was collected. Thanks for enlightening me on compost. I really didnt know
cooked foods could be used.

[KPR]

We haven’t got a bin yet, though they stopped collecting the black bins this week. If it doesn’t turn up soon the contents of my black bin are going to left outside the Town Hall.

[sherlomi]

Go for it!!

[iandavenport]

KPR - have you managed to not acknowledge that the council have moved to fortnightly black bin collection, and the next due date for Sydenham is the 17th? LBL are usually pretty hopeless, but i thought they did a god job in advertising this through the past few months

[KPR]

No - I knew that, but they haven’t given us a food bin (of either kind, internal or external) despite moving to fortnightly collection. The contents of my black bin are starting to smell somewhat.

[Spark plug]

Is it me or are the food bags just really bad and split?

[DrowsyDaisy]

Sophie

Ours wasn't going to be collected but we happened to be leaving for work and called the bin guy back from further down the street - he said they would only collect if the silver bin was on the street and not on the garden path (where it was very obvious). Gah!

[alywin]

Ours wasn't going to be collected but we happened to be leaving for work and called the bin guy back from further down the street - he said they would only collect if the silver bin was on the street and not on the garden path (where it was very obvious). Gah!

And yet, if you step over the border into Bromley, you're required to keep your bins within the boundaries of your property (Google on "edge of curtilage")

[DrowsyDaisy]

Alywin, I didn't know that but it doesn't surprise me - thanks. Now, do I put bins on the pavement and cause a nuisance or do I leave them on the path where they may not be collected....so many petty rules, so little time

[Sydenham Syd]

All seems fine to me on this excellent initiative.
Also cuts down the smell of the black bins. I haven’t changed my house bin for a week or so as the recycling and the food waste system cut down the smell so less need to change it.

Whoever wrote earlier that they were laughing about foxes etc, the bins close shut, so unless you didn’t do that, there is no way a fox could get in.

It’s not the toughest task to put them out, unless you don’t have one like KPR.

[thorno]

We're on Westwood Hill and haven't had our black bins collected for 4 weeks in a row now. I first reported it on the 19th September but my ticket with Lewisham is still 'in progress'.

If you ring them you are told by the answering machine that you can't get through to the waste team on the phone and are directed to the website.

Anyone got an email address / phone number of a person at Lewisham that I can contact directly? We've got really old rubbish which is starting to really stink, as do our neighbours.

[thorno]

Hello All,

I just found this email address and got a very prompt response:
envirocasework@lewisham.gov.uk

Just in case anyone else needs to get in touch with them.

[sophie]

Hurray! The food waste was collected yesterday. I haven’t had any response to my 2 complaints other than an automated reply. Thanks for the email Thorno. I’ll keep it for future.

We had our 2nd fortnightly black bin collection this week. I was initially resistant to the idea of fortnightly collections but for us I think it will be okay; we always fill the recycling bin but have rarely filled the black over the past few years. I know it’s early days though so will have to see. Yesterday morning I saw one of the neighbours filling other neighbours’ black bins with her rubbish so it is obviously a struggle for some people.

[chrisj1948]

We do not have a food waste bin (they never delivered one) but since we compost and feed foxes that is no loss. Our black bin, however, has not been collected for six weeks! I reported it after the missed collection a fortnight ago (I wasn't too sure about the previous one due to the changed collection regimen - I thought I might have got it wrong), and since then it has remained on the street, together with the similarly overflowing bins belonging to the neighbours on either side of us. I try to shift the cans and papers which are dumped in it by passers by to our green bin, and move the takeaway boxes to the street bins, but our neighbours bins are now overflowing and unsightly.

This is on Sydenham Road near the Newlands Park lights. It is a real pain.

Regards
Chris

[chrisj1948]

Yesterday, in desperation, I sent an email to the address given in an earlier post to outline the situation. This morning all the overflowing bins on the street around us were emptied, in my case the black, green and brown bins. This was an enormous relief.

Whilst it would obviously have been better if the normal rubbish collection had worked as it should, in this case it had failed, and I am very grateful to the Lewisham Environmental Officers for their prompt and effective response.

Regards
Chris

[sherlomi]

Our black bin was not collected last week and despite 2 complaints from me online and a promise
of it being collected with 48 hrs nothing has been done. Just reading through peoples posts
it seems to me, especially when i read that someones bin hadnt been emptied for 6 weeks, that
the problems all started with the grey food waste bins. Lewisham just does not seem to have
the resources to cope with two collections on the same day and so black bins are being left.