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?

@NeedMoreTinfoil indont have a migraine but read the title the same 😂😂

It’s fine - we’ve had them in our county for many years, although to be fair I only started bothering fairly recently, because I always saw it as a lot of faff. Now the food waste goes in there, it’s amazing how much more space I have in my big bin, it’s made a huge difference. I just leave mine right down at the bottom of the garden, as far away as possible from the house, so it doesn’t really matter if it does start to smell. I put all my food waste in compostable bags so the smell never gets too bad.

A PP said that it was composted not burnt - I think actually it’s kind of both. You can put any food you want in the council bin - meat, bones, pizza crusts etc, which you wouldn’t do if you were going to have a compost bin in your garden. So they incinerate the food waste and then it turns into compost really quickly (I think it’s 2 week), and then it gets sold by the council. I only know this because my friend was a commercial gardener and used to have big dumpy sacks of it delivered.

We get them from Tesco & they're fine.

In my area we have a little counter-top sized caddy, and then the full compostible bags go into the green waste bin. We generate quite a lot of food waste as I cook from scratch, so lots of peel/carrot tops/meat and fish bones etc, but we've never had maggots. Little caddy get a quick swill with zoflora and water between bags. All fine, and the main bin is much less whiffy since we've been able to separate food waste.

i have no problems with mine,
no flies or rats or maggots

You put cooked food in the compost??

Wait, you have a food waste caddy shaped like Ed Miliband??

Thank you!

I have a small caddy inside that I line with a composable bag which I buy myself. We are a family of 4 and I probably empty it every 3 days. It doesn’t smell and the bag maintains enough structural integrity for me to lift it up and tie it. I then put this in the small blue food waste bin which is collected weekly. This holds 3 or 4 of the bags and has a handle that keeps the lid closed. My neighbours don’t use bags and they just tip their food directly into the blue bin. I’ve never seen flies or maggots on either. I don’t wash it out that often maybe twice a year as it stays quite clean (for a bin). I did wash it out after we had a rotten egg. Maybe the problem is the bin provided by the council and you should ask for one with a lid that closes tightly.

They gave us a roll of 100 free compostable bags to put the waste in.

So waste in bag, bag in caddy. Hey presto no flies.

However, it remains to be seen whether we will get another roll of compostable bags when the first roll runs out.

Maybe the strategy is to make the caddy so appallingly bad to empty that they are forced to offer new rolls for free.

I live in an area that introduced these in April and have not seen a single maggot or fly so far. The council gave us a couple of free rolls of bin liners. I can’t understand how you’re having so many issues OP. Maybe your Aldi bags are a bit shite?

What a ludicrous attitude 🙄

It sounds like your dustman don’t know what they are doing , you aren’t obliged to use bags at all so they should still be emptying the bin even if the contents have spilled . Also it sounds like you are either over filling your bags leading to them ripping or using very inferior bags perhaps try double bagging , the bags are really cheap on Amazon .

Putting them in freezer is even better.

I've been doing it for the last few weeks when someone suggested it on here.

But a choice of colours only if you're on disability benefits.

I can't stand to use them. I have a compost bin instead - I don't even use the compost, which is essentially just a gift to worms and slugs, but it's better than getting involved in my council's horror show.

Ours gets a bit whiffy in the Summer, my solution is to have a small bin under the sink with a compostable bag. When this is full, I tie it up and transfer it to the authorised council bin. If this starts to smell I keep it further away from the house so I can't smell it. The lid locks, so no flies or maggots, and I keep a brick on top of it to stop the dog from trying to break into it.

Re the unpleasant smell and health hazards to the bin men, its not a hazard to me because I keep the lid locked. It wasn't my decision to introduce food waste bins, it was the councils. They employ the bin men, so that's an issue between the bin men, their union and the council. I keep my under the sink bin clean and sweet smelling, after the food waste is in the council bin, it is their problem. All I do is put it out for collection once a week.

We’ve had them for about 20 years. General waste bin is on 4 weekly collection. Recycling bins (3 of) fortnightly. Food caddy, nappy bin collections weekly. Never had maggots etc. But, we also have a sink waste disposal where most stuff goes down. Highly recommend them.

I suppose you must need a thicker gauge? If you look here, they seem to range from 60 - 100.

I guess some bags are designed for a quick breakdown in home compost bins, and some aren't. I'll try to find out what gauge our council uses

https://www.binliners.co.uk/consumer-bin-liners/biodegradable-bin-liners/

I'll never understand the hysterical responses to food waste bins. Putting food waste in a kitchen caddy instead of a kitchen bin means the kitchen bin doesn't smell as much, and because the caddy's smaller, it gets taken out more, so the kitchen as a whole doesn't smell as much. The food waste bin outside is holding exactly the same kind of waste as the black bin was, so it's not attracting rats or maggots any more than the black bin was, and they're designed so you can lock the handle which prevents anything getting in. How on earth can this be a problem for anyone? I seem to remember someone starting a thread in outrage because they were disabled and somehow a smaller lighter bin was impossible for them to manage. It is a mystery to me how people can get so exercised about something that costs them nothing and is designed (eventually) to cut energy bills.

I think it’s grim that we used to throw absolutey everything into landfill, or burn it. Thank goodness we’ve moved on since then.

I have had one for years. I don’t think I have had a problem with maggots in all that time but I did when it was in with the main waste which was only collected fortnightly. The lid has a locking mechanism with the handle so we don’t have a problem with rats. We did have to replace the bin once as foxes tried to gnaw through it.

A diagram is obviously needed, failing that, photos.

Here is my counter top waste caddy. The liner is larger than the caddy so it is not over-filled. I can easily tie the top together. Here are the caddy liners. And here is my outside bin in its locked position. I moved it for the photo and it is kept against an east facing wall so it doesn’t not get much sun. Damn, have to post the photos separately.

Outside waste caddy supplied by the council.

We aren't getting ours until August, our Red as the Flag, Labour council are very behind the times.
I am really looking forward to it.
We already compost, so the little bin for that gets emptied into the dalek every day or so, but I'm really pleased that we can get rid of plate scrapings, meat fat and skin, bones etc without them festering in the kitchen bin.