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Original poster

Genuine question, if you don’t use a food waste bin

205 replies

BarbarAnna · 17/02/2020 20:45

Why not?

Accepting that some people may not have a garden or room

But if you live in a house with a driveway and a garden, and your council provides food waste collections, why wouldn’t you utilise this?

I am genuinely interested to know.

Not for the first time, my dim witted dog has eaten food which has been ripped out of a bin bag by presumably cats, rats, birds or foxes.

I just don’t get why you wouldn’t use the facility if it is there.

OP posts:
EnglishRain · 17/02/2020 21:12

My area don't do food waste recycling Sad

To be fair, DH tends to polish off my leftovers, and the chickens are next in the queue after him.

scattercushion17 · 17/02/2020 21:12

My folks don't as 'they don't like the smell.' I have tried to encourage them. I've said they can only do dry like peels etc to start off with. They won't listen unfortunately.

My council don't do food waste. I Compost instead.

Oblomov20 · 17/02/2020 21:13

Was stinky. Maggots. I've noticed that only about 3 of the houses, out of say 60 on the main road use them.

seeingasyouareclueless · 17/02/2020 21:18

I didn't like doing it until I found some compostable bags to put it all into. They're a bit larger than sandwich bags, they fit into a caddy or bowl on the side and I chuck peelings etc in while prepping food and then scrape rare leftovers into it, tie a knot and sling it into the lidded garden waste bin which is collected fortnightly. I don't get sludgey mess or flies and save room in my general waste bin.

mmmmmchocolate · 17/02/2020 21:18

Where we lived before, the food bin and the general waste bin lived in the (attached to the house) garage. It was never emptied properly, I mean there was always several inches of waste left in the bottom after collection. Which would mean that on bin day, I’d have to scoop the waste out into the regular bin, wash the bin and start again. The first bin also got cracked because the bin men would throw them back on the ground and one time it was snowy, the plastic must have been brittle due to the temperature and it broke. The second bin was treated in the same way and had a crack near the lid, so in warm weather fruit flies used the gap to go in and out..

We then moved, to a house with no attached garage and I thought I’ll be damned if I’m emptying a dirty food bin into my bin that is now in the kitchen so I never started using it. It’s a shame but I’m not prepared to deal with the mess of it anymore. I’ll be using peeling and things for compost soon though so a lot of it will be utilised that way.

ShakespearesSisters · 17/02/2020 21:18

Our council don't offer food waste collection. As much as I'd love to be food waste free (I put veg peelings in my wormery) there is much left on plates and bowls by my 6 and 7 year olds which ends up in the bin. Things they loved last week, but this week don't like however much I say there is no alternative, apparently they would rather go hungry than eat something they said they enjoyed last week.

whojamaflip · 17/02/2020 21:19

Our council collects but I don't use it - left over food goes to the dogs and peelings and veg waste gets boiled up for the chickens

Frenchw1fe · 17/02/2020 21:19

We compost.

smeerf · 17/02/2020 21:23

Our council doesn't offer it if you live on an "estate" which rules us out. I'm staying at my mum's (same borough) who has it and it's pretty great, bit disappointed we can't do it. She uses a liner so the bin itself stays really clean.

Potplant · 17/02/2020 21:23

We don’t have a council collection here. I used to have a compost bin for veg peelings etc but we had a rat problem so i stopped.

I would definitely use it if the council offered the service.

Murraygoldberg · 17/02/2020 21:23

I stopped as I could never find it in the evening, the bin men would just leave it anywhere, I would need to go searching in the dark for it. It even got run over by a neighbour once

zebrapig · 17/02/2020 21:24

We don't have it but I wish we did. We'd have quite a lot from the amount of fruit the kids eat.

okiedokieme · 17/02/2020 21:27

My council doesn't collect.

Seventyone72seventy3 · 17/02/2020 21:28

I hate it when people have them on worktops as they do smell! I have a small caddy on the floor and it closes properly to keep in the pong.

easythere · 17/02/2020 21:30

My council doesn't collect either.

RicStar · 17/02/2020 21:30

Our food waste bin was not returned/ stolen twice. I dont know why as few people seem to use them.

colderthananeskimosknob · 17/02/2020 21:34

Because it stinks to high heaven
Maggots
Fruit flies
Bin juice
Because I dont want to.
However the dog is the main reason why we rarely have food waste. He IS my food waste disposal system.

APurpleSquirrel · 17/02/2020 21:34

Wow! I'm surprised so many councils don't offer this. Ours has had it for around 10years or something. Everyone is pretty used to it all now.
Most people use caddy liners. Yes there can be a smell, but no more than a normal bin & the little caddy gets emptied several times a week into the large kerbside caddy which is collected every week. Only get maggots in really hot weather - same as any normal bun though.
Our council is also increasing the amount of kerbside recycling categories.

corduroyal · 17/02/2020 21:36

I don't get the pong comments. Surely food smells more in a big kitchen bin?

We have a lidded tub in the kitchen lined with compostable bags (newspaper if we run out). Small children's leavings plus veg peelings means we make a bag every other day or so. No mess anywhere bc of the bags. No maggots, even in summer.

Our big bin only gets emptied fortnightly so it'd be awful if it went in there.

Ouchaheadinmybehind · 17/02/2020 21:40

mmmmmchocolate do you not use these? No mess at all.
www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-home-compost-caddy-liner-20-pack/p/0400384?nst=0&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkKnyBRDwARIsALtxe7i324JYMwjef7WmoW4F3qirhfTlGqd5utXJcggv3Ooz_Kbja19UX_YaAg-gEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

My attitude is that it helps landfill decompose

It really doesn’t. The recently dug up old landfill from a few decades ago on a programme for the BBC -The secret life of landfill. Even the newspapers were intact. It’s all in plastic bags then capped with soil so doesn’t decompose.

Lunafortheloveogod · 17/02/2020 21:41

We don’t have one.. dogs, and not that they eat it all but that those compostable bags that the council insist we use to put it in poisoned and killed a friends ddog who stole it after something knocked their garden caddy over.

Poor sod could obviously just smell the food in it not whatever chemical crap was being produced by the bag breaking down.

AvocadoAdvocate · 17/02/2020 21:42

5 ddogs and 3 teens. No waste ever here. what no banana peel, orange peel, avocado skin's?

Pashazade · 17/02/2020 21:42

Sadly our council don't do the bins. We did have a food digester, then we got rats. So that was the end of that and I won't put any food waste in the compost because of this.

AvocadoAdvocate · 17/02/2020 21:43

Waste disposal unit here too.

KnifeAngel · 17/02/2020 21:43

We don't have them. Our household rubbish is collected fortnightly or our garden waste is the alternate weeks March - October it can go in either. Our council spent thousands on food caddies for us to use inside the house. Complete waste of money.