From 2006 to 2010, I was a councillor for Lee Green ward in the London Borough of Lewisham. During that time, I blogged regularly and in 2009 I won the Tim Garden Award for the Best Blog by a Liberal Democrat Holding Public Office. My blog posts from my term of office are archived here in case they prove of use to former constituents, or to those who share my annoyance with faulty street furniture
Pete and Chris have uncovered new figures showing that Lewisham’s recycling record is even worse than we thought. Rather than the 22% of waste we had thought was being recycled and composted, the latest figures show recycling’s fallen off a cliff – with just 14.26% of waste recycled or composted in April.
Now, you wouldn’t think that residents’ behaviour would change quickly enough to reduce the amount they recycled by 28% in a month, and reading the small print it seems that’s not what’s happened. The Council has discovered a “discrepancy in the percentage of waste the contractor said they were recycling” – in other words, the amount being recycled has been over-estimated in the past.
The ‘Lewisham spokesperson’ quoted in the South London Press on Friday acknowledged that “Lewisham has always had quite a low recycling rate”. By my reckoning, we were seventh from bottom of the London Boroughs. The new figure would put us third from bottom. Not good news, and not at all a reflection of the huge desire to do more amongst residents.
