The new bin collection system is a nightmare. Anyone else?

[ThisIsJustDisgusting]

We had our new bins three weeks ago.

The food bin wasn't collected for a fortnight during the heatwave and so everything in the bins had rotted, decomposed, fermented (weird alcohol smell to it). And, when they wre finally collected last week, the stench that arose and lingered in the street afterwards was phenomenally foul.

I've got a pretty strong stomach but even I struggled washing the food bin out afterwards. I've never smelt anything like it.

I think part of the problem is that the composting bags provided were really thin and tore easily. Part of the problem is that there's nothing else in the bin to soak up any liquid that comes from the rotting food.

Evidently, none of neighbours washed out their bin because, a week on, I can't open the windows because the whole house ends up smelling of it 😭

Has anyone else noticed similar? Is this just how life is now..?

We’ve had food waste bins for over 20 years here… I love them. I love not having a smelly big bin!
Ours are collected weekly with the rest of the recycling. The main wheelie bin goes every 3 weeks and mine is never more than half full even with 4 cats! I do take my soft plastics to the supermarket though…
The food bin: I put a bit of kitchen roll in the bottom then the compostable bag. I use the ones from Sainsburys.
When I put it outside, it goes in a paper food bag (Sainsburys again) with the kitchen paper at the bottom.
I’ve never had big maggots but I do have loads of fruit flies at the moment which must mean there are tiny maggots somewhere!
If the bag is particularly minging I might double bag before the paper bag…
We did have a missed collection in the heatwave and after they collected the bin I gave it a good wash with Fairy liquid and disinfectant. I do this monthly anyway…
The smell goes quickly and you get used to it.
I don’t think I’ve ever smelt my neighbours food bins. Maybe we are experts here as we’ve had them so long?!

as I said uothread, we are specifically asked/told not to use compostable/biodegradeable bags 🙄

So do I. It's the only way to prevent seepage.

My local authority has also failed to meet the deadline

Ive just checked. Our bins are changingWe are getting
1 bin for paper (as opposed to bags)
1 for cans, bottles plastic
1 for everything else (no mention of food)

…how does that square with the new laws then?

We've never had a stink in the street. In the summer I go out armed with a bleach solution in a spray bottle and squirt the food bin that prevents any maggots. The kitchen caddy goes under the sink, we've never had maggots in there.

I’ve never noticed a smell except when the food lorry is doing the rounds and I’ve been food recycling well over a decade.
the best bags are Purio from Aldi, fun fact!

Surely Purio is a Lidl brand?

I dont have much food waste so this wouldn't work for everyone, but I chuck it into a tub in the freezer, then put it out on bin day still frozen. If its soft waste I puree it with some water and flush it down the loo.

We have a black bin collection every four weeks for anything that can't be recycled.
Green trollibloc for paper, cans/hard plastic, glass collected weekly.
Food bin collection weekly
Green bag for cardboard, collection weekly.
Brown bin for garden waste, collection fortnightly

We are soon to have another receptacle for soft plastics, OH joy.

We've never not had a collection in 20 years of recycling.

Sorry you are absolutely right. Purio from Lidl

Compost instead? You don’t have to geT involved in it. We have two small bins and they just sit in the garage untouched.

We don’t use them either - none of our neighbours do. We have a rat problem locally and the smell of rotting food is something we just don’t need.

My 16 yr old DS is disabled and still in nappies. We have two big bins plus our big recycling bin. The vast majority of our big bins gets taken up with dirty nappies - human faeces in your bin for two weeks is pretty awful but it is what it is. We don’t have much food waste but what we do have is the least of our issues.

We lived rurally in Wales for six and a half years till 2024 and food waste collections were already happening there. The council provided a few rolls of bags per year, they were decent quality and we never ran out.

Where we are now (southern England) food waste has been collected since April. The guys that empty the bins are extremely rough with the outdoor bins so that often the handles are left hanging off. I witnessed this happening once and asked if they could take more care, but he merely shrugged and carried on chucking them about the street.

Here we were only supplied with sufficient bags to last a month using two per week. They were really thin too, the ones we buy are stronger. We've had no issues with smells or maggots, thankfully, but lots of people locally have moaned about foxes getting into them. I'm guessing these householders haven't grasped how the locking mechanism of lid/handle works as I've seen a few put out at night with the handle in the 'unlocked' position 🙄

I thought they'd make the general waste collection fortnightly once food waste collections began, but ridiculously these are still weekly whilst recycling is fortnightly. We have barely any general waste so only put that out every other week, whereas sometimes our recycling bin is overflowing.

It's interesting that other people havent had this issue.

Like I say, we've only heen doing it for three weeks and are expecting the second food bin collection today.

I don't have an issue with any of it in theory.

I've also got the food caddy on a workspace, put kitchen roll at the bottom, empty it every day or so and clean/disinfect it every time it's emptied. No smell at all from the food caddy.

No one was expecting the first food bin collection to be missed, so everyone used it as instructed and, as with everything, there's a bit of trial and error at first in how to best manage the waste (eg it was interesting to hear of people keeping a tub in the first or freezing it.

I'll certainly be doing that in warmer weather going forwards.

But the issue is that something somewhere has gone wrong given the smell in the street - especially if other people arent noticing this in their areas.

I thought maybe someone had poured their own personal Bog of Eternal Stench (thick brown sludge that had collected in the bottom of the food bin during the heatwave) into the gutter but its rained a fair bit over the last few days and its still very strong so it hasn't been washed away of they have.

I'm just going to have to hope it eventually wears off...

But if other people haven't cleaned their outside food bins, that smell isn't ever going to go.

I think you're catastrophizing a little there. Whatever smell there ya will go when it rains and cools down even if nobody ever cleans out their bin.

I have to say we've had food collection in our area for well over a decade and have not experienced lingering smells from the bins. Has somebody's been missed or is there an undiscovered dead animal nearby?

We forgot to put our food bin out the week of the heatwave and it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had to clean when it was finally emptied. It actually made me vomit!

It made me appreciate how awful that job must be, I hope the bin men are getting paid decent money.

Does everyone else have a special little truck (our is electric) to collect the food waste, or does it go in the main bin lorry?

We have a dog, an allotment and feed a local fox, so we don't have food waste as such. The bins are about to be delivered here and it'll be good to use to replace our current system for composting. I can't imagine that it will ever go out for collection.

You have allot of spare time on your hands….

We've had food waste and garden waste in the same bin for years now - I think combining the two is key. If you compost you would never just chuck food waste in - your prunings, twiggy bits, weeds etc. all help to soak it up and keep it 'healthy'. It's all the councils just bringing it in now just for food waste (and not garden) that it's not working for.

garden waste here is a separate purchased service and you certainly cant put food waste in it

The transition hasn't been too bad for us, but it does seem completely pointless. We used to be able to put food waste in the big green wheelie bin, now it has to go in the caddy bin. So nothing more is getting composted, but a lot more plastic bags are being used to bag it up. Plus an extra bin lorry on it's rounds. How is that more environmentally friendly than the old system?? I understand not all places in my district could have the big green bin i have (the terraced houses had sacks instead for example), but i can't see why this system helps them either, as they also morebins to contend with!

It all sound like a huge pain to me. Just realised that I have never lived anywhere as an adult that had bins!
Always lived in terraced houses that open directly onto the street so it's been bin bags only. They get collected weekly coz it would be a public health issue if they werent. Honestly I think my local council is just happy if anybody remembers recycling bags exist😄

I line my food bin, bottom & all 4 sides, with thick carboard. It does help soak up liquids & bin is left cleaner.