There’s a certain Dr Who / TARDIS element to this … a mysterious box appears on the street, and everyone walks by, ignoring it … until you spot it, then wonder how it got there.
I spotted these bins for the first time yesterday. I’m guessing this is a new solution from Lewisham for flats and multiple occupancy properties that do not have space for the usual grey bin? Or is this something else they’re trialling?
How long do you think it will be before we see people trying to stuff cardboard, builders rubble and stinky old mattresses into them?
I feared the same when I saw them. They are a great idea in principle, but since people can’t seem to manage even rubbish / recycling sorting and management, I wonder how well adopted they may be.
Nice idea to increase composting though - that should be praised
Yes, I absolutely do think it’s a great initiative 
and I hope people won’t abuse them.
I only noticed the new bins yesterday. This one near the Old Fire Station on Perry Vale is stuffed with general litter. I Googled and Lewisham have a Facebook post explaining that the bins are for people living in flats above shops to put their food waste in. Great idea but why have the normal street litter bins been removed? The food waste bins should be next to a general litter bin, otherwise we end up with this. And maybe the food bins should be better labelled to explain they’re for the flats above the nearby shops.
totally agree
I’ve seen plenty of other comments on this elsewhere as well. Makes absolute no sense to remove street bins and add these. They serve different purposes and most people (non residents) will be very confused.
Hopefully our councillors will feed this back to the Lewisham waste team
I’m sure the one on Perry Vale outside the banqueting hall will see correct use…. 
Coincidentally also next to a normal food bin.
The main problem is that people aren’t using them as food bins and putting any old rubbish in as I saw one on London Road yesterday.
Southwark have also started putting food bins in Dulwich and I’ve witnessed people putting anything except food waste in them!
Indeed, I’ve been hearing about these coming back. My understanding is that there are two separate projects that happened (unfortunately) to combine … one is adding the new food waste bins for flats, the other was replacing the old open blue bins with these “fox proof” ones to stop them being raided.
It seems that they removed the old ones and did not immediately replace the old waste bins, hence leaving the food waste bins unprotected.
Hopefully if they can be paired well like this, fewer people will be confused and mess up the system
I believe that the local councillors, particularly in Perry Vale, have been quite active about this, but I’m glad to see it is resolved and hopefully will be the same in the centre of Forest Hill too.
