Is your Ed Miliband compostable food waste caddy a health hazard?

[AndyBurkhamstocks]

On the government directive our local council has taken away our landfill bins and replaced them with 1 tiny landfill bin and a compost food waste caddy which is removed on a weekly basis for burning.

I have put a (compostable) bag of food waste in the council food waste bin and bloody hell, it’s a sea of maggots and live flies. I feel sorry for the bin people who have to collect this stuff on Thursday. I have already drained out the liquid before a previous collection and I wash and dry the caddy after each collection but f me, the only way to stop the food waste from putrefying in this heat is to keep it in the fridge .

Am I the only one f ing this up? How do you stop the liquefaction of your food waste and a potential cholera outbreak?

We only got ours late last year and I think only because the government made it a legal requirement for councils. I've not noticed any problems with it, although I think some foxes or squirrels might be clever enough to get the lid off.

Sounds as if there are quality issues with whatever your council provides.

My council is among the UK's best for recycling. It's not a leafy subarbs demographic - we are talking about a relatively deprived council, South Wales valleys. Their policy has been to make recycling and green waste as easy as possible for people. I've been amazed at how happily my postcode has gone down to one general waste collection every three weeks. Three bags maximum. Most households put out one.

I would hate to have to deal with food waste in my black bins. But maybe your councils need to check how others are doing it, if the equipment isn't up to scratch

If the lids don’t actually close properly on your food waste bins than yes that’s going to be causing the problems. It only works if they’re closed tight.

I’ve had some maggots once in one the recycling bins, not sure how but the lid must have been open a bit I suppose and I didn’t realize.
cleaned it out with some disinfectant and hot water and it was fine after that and they didn’t come back.
I also have one of the big bins cleaned monthly. The bin cleaners round my way are very busy.

Ah, well that may be it. Our council provides bags. Get on to yours to do the same, to the necessary standard. Good luck!

We got a small caddy for the kitchen and a bigger caddy for outside. I’ve done away with the small one and liners and just chuck everything straight into the big one outside the back door. It’s not pretty but it’s fine.

Our council don’t provide bags. It does wind me up that you have to buy them. They are not cheap and i couldn’t face not using a bag for the food waste.

We have had the caddies for a while.

I put peelings etc in the caddy lined with a compostable bag. I put the bag in my main food waste bin (with a so say "lockable" lid) every few days. Any meat/bones, I keep in my fridge in a bag until the main bin is due to be emptied. Flies don't lay eggs on fruit/veg waste.

The "lockable" bins are not fox proof. I have found my bin and contents thrown down my back garden many times, and that is with putting bricks etc on top of it. I now just keep it in my house at night.

Cooked food is fine everywhere I've lived.

Yeah my council has provided bags for the indoor caddy and the quality is really really bad.

i have now bought some (compostable) ones off amazon and am hoping that’ll improve things.

I shop in Lidl and if I buy loose produce, I put it in the green bags they provide. They double up as caddy bags.

No separate food waste collections here - it all goes into the landfill bin. Lots of flies in the kitchen bin in the hot weather so I stuck it outside in the garden, but I usually find a drop of two of Zoflora in the bottom of the bin when I change the bag keeps the worst at bay.

We've had food waste bins for years.
Never anything gross in them beyond whatever I've thrown in. We don't throw a lot of food away though.

Worst is chicken carcass. Because I rarely make stock and I don't want to store them up in the freezer to make pints and pints of stock.

Ditto. We are a family of 2 so I am able to store my outside food caddy inside one of the massive wheelie bins, so I guess that helps.
I’ve had maggots a few times over many, many years.

Think yourself lucky you don’t live in a block of flats. We’ve recently got individual indoor food caddies and a communal outside wheelie bin. But some of the idiots on the development don’t seem to understand the bin is only for food waste and chuck all sorts in there. The result is the council won’t empty it because it’s classed as contaminated so we have a bin half full of sludge, maggots and flies in our bin store with no way of getting rid of it 🤢

Ahh , good idea with the bags out the supermarket.

We have had them for 15 years pretty much all of my adult life so don't really know any different. Yes the bin can be smelly in summer but bins are smelly.

We will leave it to air after cleaning it each week once it's been emptied, same as the inside food caddy. We have had maggots in the bin (outside only) a few times we just clean it out with some bleach.

What did you do with food waste previously? Surely it still went in a bin to be collected?

Blimey, what a fuss!
We have the choice of using compostable bags or newspaper. DF gets the Torygraph every day so I can’t think of a better use for its deranged ramblings than lining the food waste bin. We use one double sheet per week (torn in half and each half placed at 90 degrees to the other). We were given a roll of bags to begin with but have used maybe one of them in 15 years.
I don’t care which party introduced them (Conservatives here) but surely anything that makes the planet less fucked up for our kids to deal with is a win. We always used to compost our food waste but chicken bones, tea bags and avocado skins & stones did not rot. The council food waste collection gladly accepts all of them, so it’s a win here. And our non recyclable waste is only collected every 3 weeks - we rarely fill more than one black bin bag.

I've had one for about 14 years. Keep it in the shade, I actually keep mine in the garage. Keep the outside clean so flies don't lay eggs on it and make sure you keep the lid locked shut. If it does get grim it's easily cleaned out once the bin has been emptied. Ours is mainly veg and a but of bread though because ds picks all meat down to the bone.

Thank you, I will. I’ve been using the Aldi bags and (don’t flame me) an indoor food compost caddy with a lid from Waitrose.

Why would they attract rats more than having food in a regular landfill bin?

Easier to get at- ours are small, don't lock, near to the ground, no bags. Mind, I've had maggots in the big bin, horrible.

Me too. I have a Tory food caddy. Works perfectly fine. No flies nor maggots. But I’ve now got FOMO. Are Ed’s bins better? Hand delivered by Ed? Will double up as an EV charger?

I didn’t realize that Ed was responsible for the caddies tbh!

Had fucking awful problems.

Stopped using it in the hot weather.

Will use it when it's cooler again.

Caddy bags are £1.45 for 20 from Aldi or other supermarkets are a similar price. Our council allow newspaper to line it also but I prefer the bags.