Spring is (just about) here again so it's time to recycle your garden waste!

Lewisham council's free weekend garden waste recycling is returning...

From 20 March until 28 November 2010, residents can dispose of their garden waste at four sites in different parts of the borough. The four locations, open to residents from 9am to 12noon on Saturdays and Sundays, are:

Riddons Road junction with Mayeswood Road, Grove Park
Girton Road Car Park, Sydenham
Kitto Road, outside Orange Café, Telegraph Hill
Laurence House Car Park, Catford

You can bring your garden waste in plastic or reusable bags. Flowers and plants, grass clippings, hedge trimmings, leaves, and twigs and branches up to four inches in diameter will all be accepted.

We cannot accept kitchen waste, vegetable peelings, soil, turf, stones or Japanese knotweed. No trade waste or trailers, vans or open back vehicles will be allowed.

The service is free, but residents should bring along proof of address and ID.

Alternitavely residents can buy garden waste sacks: Call CallPoint on 020 8314 7171 or collect them from your local library. The sacks come in rolls of 10 and cost £10 per roll (cash payments only). The charge covers the costs of collection and transporting the waste to a compost site. Once one or more bags are full, contact CallPoint to arrange a collection.

The best option however is to do your own composting, you can try composting your garden waste (and loose shredded paper) at home, using a low-cost compost bin.

Does recycling make us green?

I noticed an interesting article on George Mombiot's Blog on the Guardian website which discusses how taking relatively small actions such as recycling tin cans allow people to overlook the bigger actions such as driving the car when public transport will do!

Recycling everything in the green bin often acts as a green badge of honour for people and in some peoples minds means that they are absolved of other responsibilities. George Mombiot cites an example from a couple of years ago when Tesco's were offering flights as a reward for recycling energy saving light bulbs.

This leads me on to the topic of waste prevention and trying to communicate this message, whilst recycling is (sometimes) a relatively simple message to communicate (place X,X and X in your green box and it will be collected on Friday morning) waste prevention is a different ball game altogether.

A piece of research recently carried out by Defra indicates that there is no single behaviour which constitutes "waste prevention" and it can range from donating goods to charity, through small reuse behaviours around the home; to activities that involve changes in consumption habits. Furthermore the report states that the "the public seems genuinely confused about what waste prevention means".

All of this means that communicating information about waste prevention is difficult and attempting to do so can provide mixed messages. Lewisham Council are supporting the WRAP led campaign Love Food Hate Waste which targets one material stream but the impacts of are both

In some cases recycling acts as a barrier to waste prevention - people think they have done enough by recycling something where in truth they should be thinking if they needed to acquire the item in the first place, or have made a decision to buy an item with less packaging.

Whilst there is obvious responsibility with Local Authorities and Governments to deal with a lot of these issues - is it going to take a big change in the publics attitudes to make a real difference and what can a local authority do to influence this?

I've heard that the council are going to start putting green lids on grey refuse bins as well to change them into recycling bins, is this true?

Yes this is true!

Lewisham Council are going to be giving 20,000 residents in the borough new
180 litre refuse bins and turning their existing refuse bins into recycling bins by replacing the lids with green ones.

For those residents with recycling boxes, the council will be modifying existing refuse bins to become a recycling bin.

The reason that the council are doing this is to encourage residents to recycle more items and reduce the amount of refuse they produce. In 2007, Lewisham ran a highly successful trial and carried out a project similar to this one, targeting 1500 houses. The results were that none of the residents who received the smaller bins requested that they were taken back and recycling also increased in this area by 69%.

Sounds a bit confusing? this is what it looks like in practice:

If you already have a grey bin and a green box this is what will happen....

If you already have a Grey bin and a Green bin this is what will happen....

Here are a few pre-prepared FAQ's that might answer some of your questions:

Why did I not receive a completely new recycling bin? Lewisham Council strives to be economically efficient while providing a quality service. Refuse bins in good condition only require a new lid. They are also much less expensive than whole bin replacement.

Will my waste fit into the new smaller refuse bin?
If you recycle everything you can in Lewisham, there will be room for non recyclable refuse. In 2007, Lewisham ran a highly successful trial where out of the 1500 houses that received smaller bins there were no requests for the return of the 240 litre bin. Recycling also increased in this area by 69%.

What happens to those bins that are taken away? Bins in good condition will be cleaned, have their lid changed to a new green one and become recycling bins for future use. If they are not in good condition, they will be recycled as normal.

Will this effect my collection days?
No, your recycling and refuse collection days will remain the same. You can find out your collection day here.

How will I know if I am going to be receiving a bin? You will receive a postcard informing you if you are part of the changeover. The roll out is due to start on the 2nd April and will start in the south east of the ward.