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?

MNHQ really doesn’t want me to post that council caddy! You’ll have to trust me.

It's absolutely grim. Won't use it unless I'm made to. Stinks and attracts vermin apart from anything else. Who thought storing food waste outside in a piddling little bin in the height of summer would be a good idea.

Our indoor caddy is lockable too OP. Not sure what’s going on with your lid thingy there?

What did you previously do with your food waste @Andsoitbeganagain ?

The local wildlife eats through the bin lids here. All of our bins have semi-circles munched out of the plastic. I think squirrels are to blame.

I hate ours. The local foxes have worked out how to open them so any Tuesday morning there is someone’s leftovers strewn across the road. We have to hide ours down the locked side and run out at 6am with it. Maggots if it’s sunny.

The council provide us with
-a bucket sized bin with a click tight lid outside
-In side the house we have two smaller caddies that we put compostable bags in. Fill them up
Tie up the bags, Throw them in the bin outside

We’ve been doing this for years
No problems
We are the only ones in our area that do it though
What everyone else does with their food waste is a mystery

Have never noticed maggots and once tied up and thrown out no smell either, but then I don’t go out to open it up for a sniff 🤣

Ps.
We do compost some peelings for yhe garden aswell

but what is the difference between a little bin and a large bin?
and the little bin gets emptied weekly

Thank you.

I think our council has just gone for the cheapest option!
I mean it’s great they give them for free. But they're not really fit for purpose

Joseph Joseph are strong caddy bin liners. Our local authority doesn’t provide liners.

We have ours for ages and have no problems with maggots etc. Small kitchen caddy emptied when reasonably full to go in outside caddy.

But you were storing food waste in a bin outside before and presumably that didn’t get collected every week.

The difference between the old bin and the new caddy is that the old bin is an ordinary height substantial bin. It's not easy for wildlife to tip up or break in. It only blows around in the strongest of gales. It's contents stay put. Sadly my council didn't provide a gold plated lockable option. It's cheap light weight plastic.. Think washing up bowl quality. It's no more than 60cm high and not lockable. It can be flipped open with your little finger. I'm fairly sure a hedgehog could tip it over let alone a cat, dog, fox or badger. All fairly frequent visitors in a rural garden.l

Ours was run over by the bin men twice in just over a month and the council still haven't delivered the second one I ordered so I've given up on it

Looking online, our council hit its targets after introducing thicker bags for these bins. So it looks as if that is the answer

We don’t use ours. Our upstairs neighbour does though and without fail it’s tipped over by foxes, swarming with flies and maggots. They then dont bother to clean it up and obviously the council doesn’t either so we end up cleaning up this grim mess on an almost weekly basis. It’s unhygienic and utterly disgusting.

Are you able to use a DIY solution such as putting adhesive draft excluder around the lid or bin so that there's no gap? We don't have a food bins where I am so not 100% on their anatomy.

I'm in east lancs, we only started in April but mines got missed 3 times already.

They were rolling them out in the SW when I left over 15 years ago.

Ours has now been delivered, but collections will not begin until September. Years ago we had a kitchen caddy, but they were so flimsy, and did not lock, so I recycled mine!

I will not be using the new caddy. All suitable food waste in this house is composted. Otherwise, we have had two chop bones and a piece of salmon skin so far since Thursday last week. It seems hardly worth it.

I wonder if there's any possibility that nice ceramic bin heats up faster than the less attractive plastic ones we get from the council? If it's for garden compost that would be a virtue.

When the image loads, you can see what my council provides. Small indoor caddy, taller outdoor caddy (lockable), bags free. I've never lined either: just used the bags.

It's working well, but they put the work in, over years. Maybe you could point your council in their direction.

I don't endorse the music choices, but the video is right - they make it easy

https://www.rctcbc.gov.uk/EN/Resident/RecyclingandWaste/WhatcanIrecycle/KerbsideRecycling/FoodRecycling.aspx

The little bin stays indoors. The contents are emptied into the big bin which is then emptied by the council each week.

You could always store your outside food caddy within your general waste bin until collection date.

I wondered if OP expects Ed Milliband to come and help her, perhaps show her how to store the waste or wash out the caddy…he seems to be taking the flack here…😆

No, we don’t have any caddy from the council. I do have an allotment so compost loads of waste.

Sefton got rid of theirs a good few years ago, so when we finally get them again (by October, apparently) they'll qualify as new!

Midlands here. We always had food and garden waste combined, but apparently we now have to have a separate food waste bin. It was brought in a couple of weeks ago for us. I've only just started filling mine and I'll see how it goes.