New food bins

I don’t have one in the kitchen after the maggot incident (DM put something in it the day before we went away ) put scraps in a bowl as I’m cooking and then scrape the plates into to it and put it out after the meal.

6 weeks is been and my food bin hasn’t been collected once. My sisters normal bins are overflowing and she’s had to do several tip runs with domestic waste as her normal waste and glass/cans haven’t been collected in SEVEN weeks. Our authority has lost the plot entirely. Is bonkers.

Why can't food waste be composted ?

Back where I used to live the council would give you a free composter to put food waste in in the back garden.

My guess is all the food waste and garden waste goes into a giant chopper and is mashed up. No real difference between food and garden waste, fruit leave etc. Maybe meat. But there is hardly a ton of that in food waste and it will still compost.

I do use the outside food bin. I use something different inside - a china thing with a lid that can go in the dishwasher. I’m not up for hand washing more fucking stuff. I have enough to do.

im surprised everyone enjoys these so much. I find that the food waste liners are so biodegradable that wetness can seep through an undamaged bag. You have to make sure they are changed lets say every 3 days and be careful how and where you carry the bag, lest it pisses itself over your floor.

so yes I do use the stuff, but carefully

Yes. It can only be a good thing surely,
Ours is mainly veg peelings, tea and coffee remnants. I did have some chicken that had turned but I put it in the freezer with a big black mark on and added it to the bin the night before. Tbh it has made me more mindful of food wastage.
Our black bin has hardly anything. Most stuff goes in mixed recyclable and I have a separate bag by the bin for the return to supermarket stuff (crisp packets and stuff)

@GasPanic Ok, so for your council area, you already had a working food waste collection so it was unnecessary for it to be replaced with a different food waste collection service. I think your council's approach of combining compostable garden waste with food waste that can't be composted must be quite unusual though.

That sounds very annoying, not enough space to put the recycling. We have one large wheelie bin for all recycling so cardboard is just folded up in there and it keeps it all tidy.

Been using them for nearly 20 years in our council. I absolutly wouldn't put food scraps in the bin now. Saves a huge amount of space in my black bin. As a family of 4 we produce half a bin bag of rubbish every 3 weeks. Our council pretty much recycles everything - about a year ago started doing soft plastics as well!

Not new. Had one for more than a decade.

You will cope.

Good grief, how did you manage to have maggots in week one? We've had a bin for 15 years and I've never seen a maggot. Just use the food waste bags, tie them up tightly, and keep the lid of the bin tightly closed at all times.

But no food waste should never have gone to landfill in the system we had before, because it all should have gone in the garden waste bin. And everyone was adept at dealing with the bi-weekly garden waste collection in terms of waste food spoilage. At least where I live.

Where I am it offers little to no benefit to the householder and extra cost on the service provider, so it is a lose-lose scenario.

We don't have food bins (yet). It would probably take me a year to fill a caddy with waste food. It's just me, I almost never peel veg (use frozen) and there's never anything left on my plate after a meal. I'm very careful with perishables, and almost nothing is ever thrown out. Tea bags, banana and orange peel - that's about it (and I'm not sure about the teabags, as most of these contain plastic these days).

Where are you? I’m in Somerset and we had them in our old house too so since 2007.

@GasPanic an immediate benefit for me is that it's collected weekly where our main bin is fortnightly. It's much nicer for the main bin in the kitchen not to have food waste in for a fortnight. Then I am also happy for less volume of waste to be going to landfill, and for the food waste to be producing a useful end product plus potentially generating electricity.

I’ve got a separate waste container in my kitchen bin with a separate lid and a wheelie bin outside for food and garden waste that’s collected together weekly, been like this for years

some areas near me have started charging for garden waste but food is still free. Where they charge they just lift the lid to check you haven’t got half a tree in there

i did have a smaller caddy outside but when it was missed for collection (which it often was) it got really full after not being collected for 2 or 3 weeks so I went for the wheelie bin

No separate bin for cardboard, just a caddy, which always gets filled. Boixes get left by the side (hence blown around).

If they had for example done an extra bin for cardboard that would have actually been useful.

I dont have them yet

I don't think people are making a massive fuss. They just don't really see the point of adding something that doesn't really improve the service for them and clearly costs the councils more money, at a time when I think most people are questioning how much council tax is and whether they get a good service.

The fact that it is government mandated gives no real ability for the councils to be flexible considering what their current waste collection arrangements are.

YABU. I’ve had one for more than 20 years. I think they’d great - they keep the general waste much cleaner and less smelly. The council takes the food waste every week and everything else once a fortnight.

Is that when collapsed and in the recycling wheelie bin, or do you have cardboard collected some other way? Not sure they could tell how big all the boxes in the bin originally was.

Another one who has had them for years. Now, if we go away to an area that doesn’t have separate food waste, it makes me feel sick to put a chicken carcass or bits of rotting vegetables into the main bin. And then it sits around for up to two weeks until the collection. Yuk. And yet, it used to be what we all did.

The ones that go outside are small - like, up to your knees or similar. They can just sit on top of the wheelie bin or tuck in next to them. The inside caddies can be v compact and you could use any container you like. Always hard in a tiny kitchen to find space for things but they’re v handy. I’d hate to be without them.

The other thing I note they have added round my way is that you are not allowed to leave any cardboard boxes bigger than a microwave oven.

Which if they actually enforce is going to piss people off no end.

I don't see why they would do this, because cardboard collection AFAIK actually makes them money.

@MandyMotherOfBrian yes I know they are treated differently. Which is why I was surprised that a garden waste collection would allow food waste including meat, bones etc which means it can't be composted.

I'm struggling with why some people are making such a fuss about them. We've had them years. Never noticed maggots.

Even my elderly DM in her 90s with cognitive issues can cope with them.

Our garden waste is collected fortnightly (and we have to pay for it). Food waste collected weekly and is free. We did get 2 caddies, small one for indoors and the main one for outside and collection. I notice that they are no longer providing a small caddy, but you can buy them or use another suitable container. We buy the compostable bags to put the food in, although these sometimes do degrade before collection. But other than that never had a problem with them