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.

If ours are stolen we have to pay for a replacement. I think it's about £10.

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

Any money made is probably offset against the council tax. Paying people would be unworkable unless they are taking it to a recycling facility themselves and having it weighed or something.

Our council doesnt dispose of food waste

It’s not an option for me as I’m in a flat and the council don’t provide. However my mum keeps threatening to flush her waste if they ever brought it in in her town! I’m not sure what would happen if she did but it doesn’t sound like a particularly good plan.

Put liners in freezer when they get full. Sling frozen bags out for bin men on collection day.

No smells, maggots, juice or rodent/fox issues.

My local council is very poor in respect of recycling. No food waste bin, no plastic trays, foil or Tetra Pak either.

i dont understand people who say they dont have any food waste?? we dont waste a lot of food but still empty our indoor caddy every 1-2 days into the outside food bin.
theres 5 of us and by the time people have had a couple of bananas, I've chopped up a pineapple, peeled some potatoes, carrots and a butternut squash, got rid of the odd piece of veg or fruit thats turned before its been eaten, some egg shells from baking etc etc its soon fills up
If I do a roast dinner that probably 2 caddies full by the time you put the chicken carcess in!
Either you all eat the above which is wierd or you buy prepeeled/chopped stuff and processed stuff??

@Rainallnight our caddy is like a teeny tiny version of the big bin, minus the wheels. Might see if I can find a prettier one now to buy myself 🤣

Yes, that doesn’t sound very attractive at all!

This is mine www.argos.co.uk/product/6224567

This is a posh one. www.johnlewis.com/joseph-joseph-stack-food-waste-caddy-4l/p2175309?s_ppc=1dxDSA-GIFTS-COOK-DINE-PP39700045868065147&tmad=c&tmcampid=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAs67yBRC7ARIsAF49CdXukKxZwI9X7rDkkLAb2kxDrQ5GnFy-m-KKxd_uNCWvmIitsZMWBFQaAqH_EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

(Sorry about the terrible links).

Either you all eat the above which is wierd or you buy prepeeled/chopped stuff and processed stuff??

Or they compost it.

Waste disposal unit here too.

Great tips for managing the cooking oil issue, thanks

We have a small caddy, can't be emptied in bigger recycling bin , food waste is collected separately. With 2 dogs and chickens food waste is really minimal , just peelings, apple core etc. I wasn't keen on having potentially smelly food caddy on kitchen side for a week. And because it's small if I leave it out with bins it's just gets blown down the street( and isn't accessible when I need it) . Tbh I just can't be bothered , I figure it will decompose in landfill anyway. Recycle everything else though.

When we had one the council only collected no weekly. It got less disgusting if the food waste was mixed with other rubbish somehow. If it were collected two times a week or more I’d definitely use it though.

@BrieAndChilli when we had chickens they would eat all of that except the bones and banana skin type stuff. But we rarely ate things with bones and we rarely ate fruit with no edible skins so we really had almost no food waste, we could go weeks without any. Other veg/fruit scraps were gobbled up. Egg shells were crushed and mixed with other food (it helps ensure they get enough calcium).

We have two small caddies, one for fruit/veg waste which goes into our garden compost bin, and the other takes cooked food/bones/meat/fish. The latter is emptied into a small brown lidded bin and is collected every week by a small bin lorry for that purpose. The bin has a handle that locks the lid shut when in the upright position. Food waste goes to a plant where it is ground up with garden and parks waste, then heated to a very high temperature and after processing it is turned into compost. The compost can be bought and I expect the rest is used in parks and flowerbeds.

If any of you grow roses, save banana peel for them. You can just place them around the base of the bushes, and they will turn black and be virtually unnoticeable, or you can dig them in to the soil. The roses thrive on the potassium in the skins.

Yes, fruit flies are a nuisance and also mould, but I find filling the bin with hot water and biological laundry liquid after emptying and giving it a good soak combats smell and mould, and puts off the flies.

In Hugh Fearnley What's his name's book" love your leftovers" there's a recipe for potato peel soup. It's lovely.

It won't decompose so easily in a bin bag. Surely if you are putting food waste in the main kitchen bin that will smell, but more, as it gets emptied less frequently.

My council are one of the only ones left in the country who have ONE bin. Just one. And everything gets chucked in. No food bin, no recycling, nothing. Because of this I struggle to get biodegradable food caddy bags. My kitchen bin broke and the lid won't close and with us on a (very) limited budget I'm saving for a replacement which will fit properly in that gap so in order to keep the kitchen smelling fresh between bin empties I bag all my food bits over the day and rinse off all packaging before binning. At least I'll be ready for when my council finally start recycling. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't. Doesn't food waste routinely get bagged before putting in the food waste bin?

I figure it will decompose in landfill anyway

You might want to google that.

Our council don’t do it.
We do compost veg and fruit matter though

We used to do it but stopped, I think my husband (who is a bit lax about environment stuff) got fed up of the yucky food waste bin. However this thread has prompted me to start doing it again. I will buy a new food waste caddy and some compostable bags. There is really no excuse for us (my family that is) not to. I cooked a big roast at the weekend when we had people over and the potato/carrot/parsnip peelings, cauliflower leaves and stalk, etc etc, took up so much space in the bin. I will restart.

Do waste disposal units contribute to Fatbergs?

Plus our council is about to move from fortnightly to weekly brown bin collections all year round. So no more excuses.

If you can't use compostable bags (they don't compost in our compost bin very well anyway) newspaper is fine.
If you have maggots or flies you need to keep it shut, get a better bin and/or wash it more often.