To not see the need for food waste bins?

I'm just going to cut to the chase:

OP you are amazing. You're a paragon of virtue, and we should all hang our heads in shame and work harder to be like you.

My council boasts that everyone in the borough has food waste bins.
My apartment block can't be provided with them because it's an apartment block; given that it's an inner London borough...😲

but aside from OP's "aren't I wonderful" post, of course lots of people do have food waste, don't have compost bins.

Well bully for you

I work , have a ND teenager and like many other quite frankly have no time or interest in a compost bin. I will happily pop it in a bin for the council to deal with .

You do you.

I have a garden but no compost bin. Quite frankly I just don't have the time or energy to add that to my ever increasing list of things to do. Maybe when I'm not juggling small children, working full time, and all the million and one other things I have to remember I will enjoy cooking up scraps, making stock and composting. In the meantime I'd love a food waste caddy so it doesn't have to go in my waste bin.

Someone superior to us all! Just because you do it doesn’t mean everyone does. I think the food waste has been great for us. I don’t realise how much food I was throwing away until I sort out the fridge on a Sunday night ready for pick up on Monday.

now I food shop much more thoughtfully and plan what I will use all the celery for rather than one meal and throwing the rest. Our landfill bin is only collected once every three weeks now so that forced people to use food waste. It’s taken away and made into bio fuel and the council gets more than it costs them to run the food waste collection too.

Because it turns into some nasty sludge liquid that then gets into the water supply

Get a waste disposal in your sink?

My leftover cat food also goes in mine. He’s terrible with waste. I don’t even know if it should but assume so!

What about those who can't or don't want to compost?
What goes in my food bin: banana peels, egg shells, tea bags, peelings off squash etc, avocado skins, ends of veg... it's not food I'd be eating, it's waste. I don't have outdoor space nor the desire for a compost bin. Many people don't.

My reasons:

1. Although I do have a garden, I'm an absolutely terrible gardener and don't have much need for compost as a result. Therefore it's a bit pointless.
2. My small children aren't great at avoiding waste. We're working on it, but I'm not willing to make them eat what's on their plate or to not have enough when they are hungry.
3. I don't know how other people manage it, but I find meal planning really difficult with small humans who might eat 5 fish fingers and no potatoes one day and 1 fish finger and a heap of potatoes the next. Therefore there are leftovers. We mostly use the leftovers (often as adult lunch), but can't always.
4. We eat fish.

As it happens, my council has decided it's fine to move to fortnightly bin collections about 2 years before bringing in food waste bins, which is a recipe for disaster. It's the fortnightly bin collection that saves a bunch of money and makes the food waste bins worthwhile, btw.

Not in landfill, no. The conditions are wrong for proper composting, so it tends to decompose in way that creates a lot more methane (stronger greenhouse gas than CO2). And food attracts rats, flies and other vermin to landfill sites - none of those are a problem with an industrial composting system.

Mine is used for tea bags, egg shells, veg peelings, orange peel, apple cores, grape stems...

I used to compost our veg, until I opened the lid and came face to face with about 20 mice! Never again. I probably only throw out a few squidgy lettuce leaves a week, but do have a lot of chicken bones and peelings.

Why can’t food waste just go to landfill though? Surely it just composts down into soil eventually? Showing my ignorance!

Doesn't the food waste go to large scale composting anyway, it's still better than throwing it into landfill to produce methane.

Ah yes I do do that sometimes ! I love a broccoli soup too!

You’re being unreasonable.

we have two food waste caddy’s in our cupboard. One for compostable and one for not.

Agree we compost majority but there are things that our worms/compost can’t take. If you look it up worms don’t like citrus, they don’t like onions or avocado skins/seeds either.

there’s also the other food waste, cooked food is still wasted eg fish skins, bones, kids leave cereal/rice/pasta etc

plus not everyone has a garden and not everyone wants to make homemade compost as they have no gardening interest

We Compost our veg peelings etc. Some weeks we don't have anything in the food waste bin, like you we only buy / cook what we will eat. We mainly use the food waste bin for meat bones as they can't go on the compost heap.
Our non-recyclable bin is only collected every 3 weeks now, not a problem as it doesn't smell as there is no food waste in it.

I'm in Melbourne and the local council's food waste collection goes into the garden bin, collected weekly.

It takes all food, including bones, oil, and used kitchen roll. No tea-bags because of the plastic.

I suppose it depends on what composting system is used. In this case a number of LAs are all in the same scheme, so there are economies of scale.

I put one small bag week into the garden bin as most veggie stuff goes into my own composter.

Yes, you're right, if you'd asked a completely different question, "is food waste bad" or maybe "why do people throw away perfectly edible food" you would have got different answers.

Guess what OP, this little known problem is being tackled by a tiny NGO called the United Nations!!! Here's some really interesting stats. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/goal-12/ I've put them in a pic too in case you can't scroll down.

As it is about 17% of food waste is caused by consumers, putting it in a food waste bin is a hugely positive factor because it gets composted instead of being shoved into landfill, plus the cash-strapped councils get money for said compost. There's literally no downside.

If you had written "aren't I marvellous because I cook from scratch and eat my leftovers" in the first place, you wouldn't have four pages telling you why you're wrong . And you are marvellous! And so am I! My food waste bin is nothing but potato peels and avocado stones! But other people's lives maybe a bit more chaotic or disorganised and they have mouldy satsumas and forgotten cake so why don't we try being kind to them 👍

People need to think they are binning money with throwing perfectly good food away. Take the spag Bol I mentioned in a pp. That’s £1.80- £3.20 binned, depending on fat content of mince, veg, if tomatoes come from an economy tin of tomatoes or a pasta sauce.

They say an average person bins 70kg of edible food a year. I probably bin about 10-15% on mouldy food. That means someone is binning 120kg a year

I'm another one that got rid of my garden composter due to rats. They loved the eggshells and potato peel. I'm grateful for the kerbside wastebin it enures my scraps, peel, bones and teabags don't go into landfill. You can be a low waste family but still need a foodbin

I have an insinkerator waste disposal so barely throw away any food waste at all. All of it goes into the "chuffer" (that's what my kids call it!) We had it fitted because we're a large family and our bins would fill up quickly. The only things I don't put down there are avocado stones and mango hearts. It even crushes bones.