How can I keep my wheelie bin maggot free?

[ohdearwhatamess]

This problem plagued me last summer, and has started again.

Fortnightly collections. We are avid recyclers and composters, so what goes in the bin is nappies (double bagged), plastic packaging, and meat leftovers. All in black bin bags, not thrown straight into the bin.

I clean the bin out straight after it has been emptied with bleach and water, and throw in some Jeyes yellow granules that are supposed to keep it fresh and lovely.

And yet still the maggots come by about day 10.

The council tell me that it is impossible for maggots to get inside the bin if the lid is shut, which is nonsense on my experience.

[booyhoo]

this is just a mad guess but, you know the stuff that keeps flies away thats in candles? well can you get that not in candle form? ie liquid or spray and put it in the bin to keep them from laying? again, just a mad guess, i dont know what im talking about.

[TBCoalman]

We have this problem. I do what you do, also line the bin with wheelie bin liner and secure very tightly. Some maggots still there, but at least thrown away with rubbish, not left in bin for me to empty.

Have just got a waste disposal unit for non compostable leftovers, so hoping this will make a difference.

[ohdearwhatamess]

Both great ideas - thank you.

TBC - where do you get the wheelie bin liners from?

Any more ideas welcomed.

[beanieb]

Do you have pets?

I think my maggots come from flies which lay eggs on the cat food and then gets thrown in the food waste bin.

[CMOTdibbler]

Get a bokashi bin - then all your meat scraps and other waste food/organics that can't be directly composted will go in the Bokashi and thence to the compost bin.

No maggots in our wheelie bin !

[Jux]

Regularly throw Vim in.

[LovelyRitaMeterMaid]

We have a bin cleaning compay come once a month and clean it. It's about £3 a clean which I think is pretty good.

[moshie]

Spray it regularly with fly spray and make sure the lid is kept closed.

[ohdearwhatamess]

Will look into Bokashi bins.

I do have a dog but he eats dry food only and every last scrap of it, so I don't think he's the source of this particular problem.

[ohdearwhatamess]

Have tried fly spray (albeit only when the first maggot rears its ugly head) and haven't had much success.

[TBCoalman]

Wheelie bin liners from tesco. But you need to remember to unsecure them on bin day, or they stay in bin all slimy and maggoty.

[moshie]

No, don't wait to see maggots, you want to kill the flies that lay the eggs. It's a preventative measure.

[TheProvincialLady]

Please tell me this only affects people whose bins are only emptied fortnightly? We have never had maggots (yet). We are vegetarians though - do they particularly like meat?

[GrendelsMum]

We've never had maggots in our black bins, and I don't know anyone else that has - the only thing I can think I do differently to you is that at the beginning of the fortnight, I tend to bag up the raw / meat scraps before I then put them in our bin bag. We never ever clean our black bin.

It seems odd that you're getting flies inside your bin to lay their eggs - is the lid slightly chipped anywhere?

(In fact, we can put meat and fish into either green or black bins, so in Cambridgeshire you still get a weekly collection of smelly stuff, but I don't put it in the green bin and always put it in the black.)

What a colleague of mine does is to put all the meat and fish scraps over the course of the two weeks in a couple of ice-cream tubs in his freezer, and then empties them out into the bin when he puts it out. Because he's so eco, and we have this option in Cambridgeshire, he saves up all his meat scraps to go in the fortnightly green bin.

Hope that's some vague help!

[GrimmaTheNome]

Odd. Its sometimes struck me that our wheelie bin is remarkably un-pongy, given that I never clean it and, apart from the various non-recyclables, it contains bags of dog poop. I have always assumed this is simply because the lid works to keep out flies.

It does occur to me that the one thing that never goes into our bin is raw or cooked meat scraps - they are first processed by the dog (welcome additions to his normal dry food). Perhaps dog poo is just a lot less attractive to flies than meat. Maybe you should try it - your dog is unlikely to object to being a waste processor!

[Starbear]

We can put meat in the food recycling. Could you contact the council about this? If you have what did they say.

[JohnnyTwoHats]

I have never had maggots either. I think as others have said it must be to do with flies getting in so I would look at whether the lid is always closed or if you have a hole.

[JohnnyTwoHats]

Or (this has just occurred to me) maybe the flies are laying their eggs in your kitchen bin before you transfer it to the wheelie bin- is that possible? Do you have a bin that flies can access in your kitchen?

[ohdearwhatamess]

Thank you all for these ideas. Really helpful.

The idea that the wheelie bin might have a hole, chip, or other entry point is an interesting one. I will examine it in detail next time it is empty.

The problem is exacerbated, I'm sure, by the fact that the bin has to live on the sunniest side of the house. The only other thing I can think of is to keep another bin at the back of the house in a shady spot then transfer the contents on bin day. Bit of a faff though (albeit less so than de-maggoting a bin )

Pretty sure the kitchen bin isn't the sources of the problem. It would be dripping in maggots if it was. I've never seen even a hint of fly or maggot life there (thank goodness).

Grimma - it is more chicken bones, fat trimmed off meat etc, than actual 'good' meat (which does get eaten). The stuff I can't/won't give to the dog, however much he'd like it.

We can put meat waste directly into our brown recycling bin (also only collected fortnightly), wrapped in one layer of newspaper. We tried that last year, when the council introduced this, and we had flies and maggots in that bin too within days.

Love the idea of freezing the waste but, sadly, only have a small freezer that is always too full.

[TBCoalman]

Hmm, our bin is in direct sunlight too.

[BusyBeeWithThree]

We have maggots too wondered about this loos an excellent idea but expensive...

[BusyBeeWithThree]

I meant looks

[MadameCastafiore]

oooohhhh I wish we had a wheelie bin so I could have one of those!

The bokashi thing looks good!

[Starbear]

Our council collects landfill every two weeks food and recycle stuff every week. I would mention this to your council.

[GrendelsMum]

Can you put the meat in the brown bin one week and the black bin the next, so the meat's being collected weekly?

Could you take a scientific approach to this and identify whether it's the meat that's the problem by not eating meat for a couple of weeks, and seeing whether you still get maggots in your bin? At least that way you'd have narrowed down the problem more confidently.