AIBU not to use the food waste bin?

[MRex]

We put veg cuttings in the garden bin (onion skin, end of lettuce, any manky bits), any bits of bread or leftover cooked veg out for the birds. A few grains of rice or whatever left on the plate would just stick inside the food bin. We serve almost everything at the table rather than dishing out in advance so we take what we need and can store leftovers in the fridge or freezer and are good at using them all up eventually (slow cooker meat might end up in a wrap with salad, leftover omelette or pancake slices defrosted for DS snacks while out etc). We get chicken breast and sometimes steak so there's a tiny amount of fat, which most weeks would be the only thing I could think to put in the food bin and I'm not entertaining the foxes for the sake of ~10g of chicken fat that would probably be stuck to the bin or left behind as the binmen assume it's "empty".

I've seen various recycling messages making a big deal out of food waste and I just don't get it because I can't think of what could go in the food bin. It can't be about food at the dump because the smell of food on non-recyclable bits of packaging would still attract rats and whatever. All I can think is that some people have lots of excess food wastage, but then shouldn't they just be more careful about the food dates and how much they cook / how they serve?

Obviously IABU to judge, so enlighten me please, what do you put in your food waste bin? Why are we unreasonable (if we are) by not using ours for those bits of chicken fat?

I don't use mine. The caddy the council provide is impossible to open with my arthritic hands!

I have a compost bin, very rarely have food waste so never use just like you. You are not alone!

It sounds like you are very considerate and don't create a lot of waste but there are some people who never use it because they bin all wastes food in the general rubbish. The push is to get them to dispose of their food waste more considerately.

An idea for your chicken and beef fatty bits. Dry them out in the residual heat of your oven then once they are really dry and brittle, break them down for bird food.

But me, I do use my caddy (with caddybags). We have a lot of banana skin, apple cores as well as veg peel which we just don't have the capacity to compost.

Do you not peel any veg? Have cores or stalks left from fruit? Where do you put tea bags and egg shells?
This is the stuff that typically ends up in our food waste bins

I don’t have a garden compost or animals like chicken who could eat peelings etc. All my veg peelings, apple cores banana skins and the like have to be disposed of, so our food compost bin is filled at least twice a week.

I compost all veg peelings and coffee grinds. We don’t use our food bin at all.

@LizzieMacQueen - can birds eat chicken?

@TheTrollFairy - veg stalks go in the garden waste bin. Teabags we very rarely use (coffee house) but I put in garden waste when we do. Eggshells is a good point, we put those in general waste, usually 8-12 per week so I guess that would be something for food waste.

Lots of food waste here- banana skins, orange peel, tea bags, the tough green bits from the top of leeks, onion skins, egg shells, etc etc etc.

We have apple cores, banana peels, orange peel, tangerine peel, grape stalks, tops of strawberries, plum stones, nectarine stones, End of lettuce, end of cucumbers, Stalk of broccoli, Tops and bottoms of carrots and parsnips, Cauliflower stalk, cabbage stalk, crusts of bread, chicken bones, fat from meat, lamb bones, fish bones, then any food that’s been left over on the plate.

Do you use a bag? Might stop the who stick to bin thing - a corn starch one not plastic

Teabags have plastic in them and should go in the regular bin

Can you break down egg shells for your garden soil?

TBH I have no idea if birds could eat chicken waste (yeah, that sounds a bit cannabalistic) I was just thinking of ways to completely recycle your scraps.

Our council, we add our caddy bags to general garden waste, the big wheelie bins get emptied fortnightly.

Of yeah, and as op said- tea bags, egg shells (we use about 20 eggs per week), onion skins, tops and bottoms of leek, brown onion, red onion, spring onion, Red, yellow, green and orange peppers, runner beans, tops and bottoms of green beans,..... I’m sure there are loads more I can’t think of right now.

We use our food compost bin all the time for fruit and veg peelings, tomato stalks (we go through loads of tomatoes) and the odd piece of bread. We don't feed the birds other than through freezers on the trees due to the bloody nuisance seagulls.

We compost and have very few left overs that aren't used so don't use the food bin, we also don't have a caddy just bags that go out, so you just end up with a fox fest every bin day. Teabags, coffee grounds and eggshells (rinsed) can all go in the compost too. We don't put bread out for birds because we have a cat, but I go over to my neighbour across the road and she puts the odd bit on her bird table.

Our council rule is to put food waste in with the garden waste , they specify no teabags due to the plastic

OP what do you mean when you say ‘garden waste bin?’ As we have one of those that is collected every two weeks that is for grass, hedge cutting etc. Our food has to go in an outside food caddy.

In my area the food waste and garden waste go into the same bin, which makes it very easy.

If I were in your shoes I'm not sure I'd want to bother either.

We buy biodegradable caddy sacks, so nothing sticks to the bin.

We use our food bin a lot (probably because the council give us a small indoor one and a bigger outdoor one) for fruit peel, egg shells, etc.
But, the bin men do actually put the food waste on the same truck as the recycling.

Veg peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds, orange peel etc., the odd bit of meat fat or fish skin, or mouldy bread, the remains of a chicken carcass after I've invariably boiled it up for stock.
Hardly anything else ever - I'm the queen of leftovers.

We have only a very small garden so no compost bin.

Anything potentially very smelly or fly-attracting, scraps of meat or fish, etc. will be put in the freezer until the night before the bin men come.

Yorkshire tea bags are now plastic free - or at least moving that way. www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/brew-news/our-use-of-plastic

We don't have food waste bins or caddies in our area despite constant requests from everyone here. The high rise flats in front of our crescent have a big communal food waste bin so its beyond me why the 15 houses behind them don't have anything and we're not allowed to use their communal one!

We also compost and very little goes in the food waste bins. I do use it for chicken bones, fish skin and leftover meat products. Fag ends of chinese takeaways probably make up the largest proportion. But it's a tiny amount each week.

I was wondering the same as you at one point and weighed our food waste. It was miles under the national average, so I think the answer is that composting makes a huge difference. And also that lots of people are enormously wasteful and those are the people the adverts are aimed at.

@TheHandsOfNeilBuchanan - egg shells in the garden bin! That would be easy to do, though washing them would be a faff.

@IsobelRae23 - yes, the big green bin. As it has berries and roots from cutting the garden, there's no difference in adding stalks etc.

@Jen224 - that's good to know thanks, I'll open the teabags tio dump the leaves and put the bags into the general waste then.