Green food waste bags no longer free from Southwark Council

[Mrs TP]

Am I the only one who has missed this sneaky move, which I have copied from the Southwark Council website:

"From 1 April 2015 compostable food waste bags will no longer be provided free of charge for residents on the food waste service. While stocks last food waste bags are still available free of charge from libraries and Southwark?s Reuse and Recycling Centre."

I must admit I have been collecting them from the mobile recycling promotion van at the top of Barry Road when I have seen it and hadn't thought us no longer getting them on the doorstep - grr ...

[dumpertruck]

Yes, I saw that. It was quite well publicised. Not at all sure what's so sneaky about it - councils are having to make cuts.

[Sue]

I saw it too. Don't think it was sneaky.

Not surprised they are stopping doing it - I was inundated with green bags left on my doorstep and (luckily) now have enough to last me for years :))

So they probably spent a lot more on the bags than they needed to.

Plus some batches seemed to be quite crap and split as soon as you tried to put them on the bin :(

[Mrs TP]

M'm probably erratic delivery, we never had enough. Use 3/4 a week with all the peelings for a family. Don't want a compost box as mice, rats and foxes a big enough problem without encouraging them. Sneaky as in 'look at this brilliant new way of rubbish collection oh and by the way you will have to help fund it yourselves a few years down the line on top your regular council tax by buying your own bags' - aren't we all making cutbacks :(

[richard tudor]

dumpertruck Wrote:

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> Yes, I saw that. It was quite well publicised. Not

> at all sure what's so sneaky about it - councils

> are having to make cuts.

Did you know that Tooley Street and the other brand new New Cross office have spent ?169.000.00 on refreshments for staff drinks in the last financial year.

[BrandNewGuy]

A while ago, Cllr. Barber posted how little the green bags cost the Council (in bulk) compared to what we poor punters have to pay ? and now the retail cost is passed onto us rather than us taking advantage of bulk wholesale buying through our council tax.. Classic frontline cutback to camouflage fewer cutbacks in less visible parts of the Council.

[keano77]

dumpertruck Wrote:

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> Yes, I saw that. It was quite well publicised. Not

> at all sure what's so sneaky about it - councils

> are having to make cuts.

They seem to have plenty of money to paint 20 MPH signs all over the roads of Southwark. I would question budgetary priorities.

[dumpertruck]

richard tudor Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> dumpertruck Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Yes, I saw that. It was quite well publicised.

> Not

> > at all sure what's so sneaky about it -

> councils

> > are having to make cuts.

>

> Did you know that Tooley Street and the other

> brand new New Cross office have spent ?169.000.00

> on refreshments for staff drinks in the last

> financial year.

No, I didn't.

Mrs TP - you can buy them here quite cheaply. Probably set you back about a quid a month if you get through 3 or 4 a week: http://www.caddylinersdirect.co.uk/shop/

[Penguin68]

Did you know that Tooley Street and the other brand new New Cross office have spent ?169.000.00 on refreshments for staff drinks in the last financial year.

My old company (a major blue chip) determined that meetings would not be catered (including coffee/ water), unless they were scheduled to last for more than 2 hours and were classed as 'training' - or as 'strategic development meetings' - when breaking for refreshments at a canteen (where employees would then be paying, not the company) would be seen as disruptive to the process. This was a commercial company which made substantial profits, not a publicly funded authority.

But then, my old company also viewed any business meeting that lasted for more than an hour as (broadly) a waste of time - what can't be done in an hour face-to-face should be being addressed differently - or ideally in different, much shorter, meetings where only those directly impacted should be attending. This has not been my experience in the public sector, where interminable meetings to no effect seem to be the norm.

[Nigello]

You could also use paper bags/carriers as long as your waste is not too wet, or is paper verboten in this particular bin?

[dds29]

I too was initially v.annoyed at the phasing out of free bags; especially as i would have thought anything that encourages people to separate their food waste is worth the expenditure, but I think Southwark must be one of the last councils giving free bags. I also found that website which looks good value.

On their website, in the section that announced the change, it states you can wrap your food in newspaper to go in the brown bin.

[Bluerevolution]

Thanks for the heads up, we knew nothing about this

[Vik]

We never had them delivered unless we requested them, and I didn't find out until I last requested them

It's a shame, I do think it will stop people separating their food waste. I'm having to buy from Sainsburys now at ?3 a roll.

[Sue]

If you don't have paper, I don't know if it would be allowed to use say a carrier bag but then decant the contents from the kitchen caddy into the brown bin outside?

On second thoughts, probably too messy and smelly :(

[Take Note]

They're ?1 a roll in Sainsburys, or you could use the Sunday papers.

[ratty]

Lidl ones are best

[bloonoo]

why do you have to use a bag at all? can't you just put the food directly into the caddy, then carry the caddy to the bin and dump in the bin? the bags are so thin anyway once they're full they're likely to split.

[Siduhe]

bloonoo, if you don't have a large brown bin, just a caddy (i.e. no garden waste) the refuse team won't empty the caddy unless the waste is bagged. If you have loose items they leave the bin (in my case with a note on explaining why it wasn't emptied the one time I'd left unbagged flowers in).

[Sue]

Siduhe Wrote:

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>

> If you have loose items they leave the bin (in my

> case with a note on explaining why it wasn't

> emptied the one time I'd left unbagged flowers

> in).

I didn't know that! Before I had a compost heap I quite often put unbagged flowers, deadheaded flowers etc in the outside caddy - I never got a note :)

[DulwichFox]

I have a few left.. was only thinking this morning I need to order some more...

Next thing.. Southwark will be issuing fines when people use other methods to dump food waste.

DulwichFox

[James Barber]

Southwark Labour are about to introduce charges for bulk waste collection - have any clear outs now while still free.

Proposal is ?15 per collection.

[Penguin68]

Well, that's a roll-on to an increase in local fly-tipping then. Guess Camberwell Old Cemetery will be filling up again with mattresses. Good call.

[richard tudor]

Fly tipping increase then.

Any other proposed money earning schemes we should now about?

[BrandNewGuy]

Oh great. I look forward to inundating the flytipping hotline. Still, the Council knows all about turning a blind eye to flytipping:

http://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/contaminated-waste-to-be-treated-in-cemetery-woodland/

[Bellenden Belle]

We moved from Southwark to Bromley Council last year and I think you only realise how good a borough is when you have a comparison.

We have fortnightly waste collections and no bulk collection service at all. We even had to buy our own bins (fifty pounds) and yes we have to buy the food waste bags.

The difference is that Bromley has been doing this for ages - so now that they are looking to make cuts it's to vital services such as adult education and the library service (which already is a far poorer offering than Southwark.

I would choose Southwark as my local council in a heartbeat, over tight fisted Tory-run Bromley.