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

[BarbarAnna]

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.

We don't have an official food waste collection despite having a food waste digester in our town.

I compost as much as my garden bin and the worms can manage. But when it's full up I have to bin the scraps.

What happens to food waste?

Food waste makes up at least 25% of the average household bin and by recycling it we can reduce the amount of rubbish we send to a landfill site. When buried in a landfill waste releases methane, a gas 20 times more harmful to the environment than CO2. Not only does landfilling food waste damage the environment, it's also very expensive - it costs £40,000 every day to landfill Croydon's rubbish.

Your food waste will quickly be turned into an agricultural nutrient-rich fertiliser at a high-tech specialist facility.

Ours dont collect it

Can’t be bothered, to be honest. Council want us to put it in with garden waste but you can’t use food caddy liners (even the cornstarch biodegradable ones) and the green bin only collected once a month this time of year. I can’t be doing with the mess and hassle of yet another sodding bin in the kitchen.

Apart from vegetable/fruit peelings and maybe a tiny bit of left over food (couple of mouthfuls worth) we don’t have any waste but I still wouldn’t use it if we had more. We were given a small brown compost bin for indoors but to leave that on the side building up, especially in the summer just doesn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t deal with the maggots

We don't have that service where I live.
All the left over food goes in the dog, all the peelings from fruit and veg, teabags etc, go on the coal fire.

I don't get maggots unless I've forgotten to put a clip on the compostable bag. Which I have to do anyway to stop the dog treating it like his personal snack box.

Revolting things. A pile of rotting food in a kitchen. Minimal waste because I grow our own or purchasejust what we need. - I make elderly neighbour's soup or a supper dish if we so have leftovers. I rarely peel most vegetables but those I do get composted on heap a long way from the house.

We put what we can on our own compost bin (things like apple cores, onion skins, broccoli stalks). The rest goes in the council food bin (e.g. banana skins which don't home compost, kids food left overs). We have a pull out bin in the kitchen with four compartments, we use one of the small ones with a liner for food waste. We empty it every couple of days into our council provided food waste bin. That is collected weekly by the council. It has a lid that locks so no problems with it being knocked over and animals eating leftovers. It's only a small bin so is very quick to hose out when needed, and using compostable bags means it rarely needs doing. We've never had maggots, presumably because it's emptied weekly.

Our general waste bin is only collected fortnightly, not putting any food in it means it never gets manky.

I really don't understand why people are being so precious about separating out food waste if the council collects it. It's turned into fertilizer, so much better for the planet than sending it to landfill!

Chickens.
Feathery bin-mouths

The smell, not collected weekly, cat or something else getting in and pulling it out making a mess, maggots and flies 🤢

I only started recently and previously my answer was sheer laziness and disorganisation. And I didn’t like the kitchen caddy the council provided.

And then I read something horrifying about food waste and landfill and greenhouse gases and got myself a lovely little countertop caddy from Argos and am now painfully evangelical about it.

I’ve got a 3.5 year old and a 1.5 year old so a certain amount of food waste is inevitable.

I’m so ashamed of not having done it before.

Our council doesn't do it, but they only send 5% of rubbish to landfill, so maybe that's why? 🤷‍♀️

I can’t bring myself to open it to look at the remains of their breakfast and lunch festering away

If it gets emptied out every day nothing should be festering. And is it any worse than it sitting in the regular rubbish bin?

Our council introduced weekly food collection last September and issued food caddies and the small food collection bins and I'm now a total convert. Some weeks I hardly have any food waste but still put it out for collection. Both the bins have locking handles which keep the bins fairly smell-proof and the best bit is because they are small they are easily wiped/rinsed out with white vinegar and good to go.

Can't say I'm looking forward to it. If they were a mini version of the big bins with a lid then it would help solve some of the problems maybe

That’s what ours is like. A tiny version of the wheely bin that you use indoors and line with compostable bags and then take the bags out to the bigger brown bin. My only complaint is the bags aren’t as good quality as they used to be, I might start buying my own rather than relying on the council ones

My council will not collect the general bin if they suspect there is food waste in it. Everyone in my area uses one, except new people.

I love not having bin juice in my normal bin.

@ClappyFlappy You can get whatever kind you like to use in your kitchen. Then the bag just goes out to whatever external bin the council has provided. There are all sorts of nice caddies available, they all have lids, and some of them have little ventilation systems etc. It’s honestly great.

Very little food waste, no food waste collection, compost is of no use in my garden ( no areas of soil), can't have anything in garden that my teen with learning difficulties would mess with - already have problems with him getting stuff out of the recycling bin.

The council don’t let us have one because we live in a flat - I want one !

Our council don't offer this. I do double-bag food waste before I put it in the ordinary bin though.

Your food waste will quickly be turned into an agricultural nutrient-rich fertiliser at a high-tech specialist facility

Could they pay homeowners for food waste then? Seems like it should be a valuable product

(I am reminded of this as households used to be paid for human waste by private entrepreneurs in a country I used to live in and sell it to farmers as fertiliser. Long since gone since chemical fertilisers are within their reach though)

We have one and it is never disgusting. We are veggie so no meat in there. We don't waste food. But it is useful for veg peeling, skin of kiwis and bananas, apple cores, egg shells. The small one in the kitchen we use with Aldi compostable bags and empty every 2 days or so into the big one outside.
I put teabags in the bin so it doesn't get too wet.
To be honest, I think living with a dog is more disgusting on balance!

I had to persuade DP to get on board by saying the resulting fertiliser would specifically be used at our local park. (It won’t).

My food waste bin was stolen, I reported it and 4 years later it still hasn't been replaced.

I now just use a compost bin in my garden.