How to make food waste caddies more sanitary?

[georgarina]

I've got a caddy from the council to recycle food waste, but it's really horrible :( smells bad, steams up and the inside gets wet with rotting juice, and I have to keep it on the kitchen surface so toddler DCs can't get to it.

(I can't keep it outside because we live in a building with daily rubbish collection so it will be collected daily if left outside.)

Is there any way to make it more sanitary/inoffensive?

What's wrong with it being collected daily,surely that would solve the issue?

Worm composter?

A few years ago I saw people had developed smaller ones.

You have to use more compostable bags?

Though to be fair when I started using them my council's instructions were that you empty them every 2-3 days.

Oddly this is the time of year I can go about 4 days however in summer or winter, when my heating is on, I have to stick to a max of 3 days.

Just a normal compost bin would be fine. Stick green garden waste and leaves in it too. There are a tons of worms in it anyway. Build it, and they will come 😀🐛

Use two bags at the same time and empty every two days, boiling water and bleach rinse each time

Try Aldi bags. They're so bloody "compostable" that one started composting itself while it was still in the kitchen caddy and when I emptied it, the bottom disntegrated and loads of slimy shite went all over the kitchen floor.

I use two now, one inside the other, which has more than wiped out the saving from buying them in the first place.

It's back to Tesco bags for me, and another entry in the book of LakieLady's False Economies.

I saw a tip where someone used a period pad at the bottom of the caddy before putting in the bag.

In the summer, I put the bag in a small plastic container and put it in the fridge overnight. Any full bags get put in the freezer until weekly collection. I know I could keep them outside with the bigger food caddy but don't like all the juices that leak out for days and days.

Thay defeats the object of less land fill surely?

Using the freezer is a great idea.

Mine doesn't smell at all, no matter how rank the contents. It has a charcoal filter in the lid.

The PP said she had a small garden so I doubt she has room for a compost bin.

Also you don't want to put food waste into a normal compost bin unless you want to attract mice and rats.

My council doesn't let you use the compostable bags but I get brown paper ones off Amazon.

after me forgetting one full of food and it turning into a smelly slimey mess soz but i just tip food waste into the main bin bag now i do recycle as much plastic card tin glass as i can but no a food caddy is not a hill im going to die on

Compostable bags if you can get them; but am guessing you have considered this and they were not supplied. In that case maybe supermarket or online?

If you have space in your freezer, you could put a plastic container in it to hold compostable bags of food waste (1-2 days waste in each). At the end of the week, put the frozen bags into the food waste container. I agree though, these things are fucking disgusting.

What are you putting in it for it to be steaming up so fast? Is it meat waste? Maybe keep that in a bag in the freezer until you're ready to throw it out. Use the caddy for fruit and veg scraps.

Take an armful of free newspapers from train station. Line the caddy, then wrap your food waste in a sheet of paper before putting in bin.

Ugh, I find them disgusting so have never used ours. I couldn’t cope with it sitting and festering on the side. Our kitchen is always warm from the Aga.

We instead have a worm composter which lives in a covered outside porch area at the back door and any peelings etc go in there after every meal prep so nothing lingers on the side. We also have a regular compost heap where any bigger or less worm-friendly things go.

Any (suitable) food leftovers go into the chicken run.

‘’I saw a tip where someone used a period pad at the bottom of the caddy before putting in the bag.’’

A period pad isn’t compostable though - they generally contain plastic don’t they?

OP if you only have a few peelings each day could you wrap in free paper/envelopes and then put out for collection each day?

The problem is the stuff you are putting in it is too wet. Something like a colander in a lidded nappy bucket would let it drain more, then put it in the caddy when its drier. Tip the juice down the sink or toilet.

For those who don't have a food collection, or would rather compost all your food waste instead, you could try the bokashi method.

All I have in my general waste now is non recyclable plastic, and no icky food waste going rotten in a caddy. It makes fantastic compost!

I leave my lid open when the bag is new and content is peelings and not bad smelling before it deteriorates. Slows down the damp thing.
Never put a hot anything in it and avoid anything liquid.
Empty immediately after melon seeds or similar fruits as that's always bad on the sweating and smell.

Keep it out of the sun?!

Always keep closed with window or door open as flies come in then there is maggot trouble. !

Not that hard but really seems to work.

I'd never heard of the Bokashi method, but lack of food waste collection is a problem we hate, so I looked it up. It seems that you need a spot in the garden to bury it in, though, and we don't really have that in our landlord's back yard. The two small flower beds could cope with fully made compost, but not stuff that still needs to decompose further. Is there some kind of hack for getting round that?

LordMooey, if you don't want to bury it, you can mix it 50:50 with soil in a lidded plastic box, then cover with more soil. If you have space outside, drill lots of holes in the base and sides of the box to let air and moisture circulate and leave it outside in contact with soil. This is called a 'soil factory'. The fermented food will break down into soil in about 4-8 weeks - much quicker than composting.

Alternatively, if you already have a composter such as a dalek, you can mix your fermented food waste with an equal volume of shredded paper, cardboard or dead leaves and add it to your compost - it composts down very quickly.

We put ours in the dishwasher every week, keeps it fresh. I also Milton the large outside one that goes out to the binmen every week.