to think food waste should be uplifted weekly to prevent fly infestations?

[brooksmantila]

I live in Scotland and in a residential area with lots of terraced housing. In late winter 2022 our local council changed our food waste collection from weekly to every 2 or 3 weeks. They gave us all large brown bins that were to be used for food waste and garden waste.

Last summer we had the worst issues I have ever seen with fruit flies and house flies in the 10 years I have lived here. I bought and set up traps and hovered as many of them up as I could. I am pretty fastidious about cleaning the kitchen, drains and so on always have been but became even more so. It was a constant battle and I knew the fruit flies were coming in from outside because I could see them flying in the bathroom window when I was in the shower and because when you put food waste in the outside bin lots of them are in the outside bin, the neighbours as well. Everyone in the local area is having the same issue.

Looking into it the reduced uplift of food waste is allowing a full breeding cycle for fruit files which are then coming into our homes, if the council uplifted the food waste more often then we would not be having these issues. The council has also now stopped taking garden waste and now you need to pay extra. Fair enough but what I want is my food waste taken away on a weekly basis to prevent the constant problems with fruit flies and flies.

It makes me feel ill to see them try and land on the food I am preparing and the fruit flies are so small they can get everywhere. Perhaps it is just me but I feel sickened by them. I have vinegar traps in hot spots, I hoover them up with my dust buster and I have citronella oil everywhere. I wash out my food bins inside and out every time they are emptied and do my sinks / drains every night after dinner.

Not every neighbour bothers as much even though I was in one neighbours house where they must have had 100 fruit flies in the kitchen alone (shudder) so perhaps they don't see it or it doesn't bother them. Local forums are saying the same thing flies everywhere so it is a wide spread issue.

I don't think it will change until councils start taking the food waste away weekly again and by not doing so they are creating a public health issue and infestations.

Let me know if you agree by voting

YANBU - Yes food waste needs to be collected weekly
YABU - Once or Twice a month food waste collection is fine.

Also any tips on deterring them would be great!

I'll look into it again but I had at the time looked into it and thought I was doing it right but the garden's here are small and I didn't want the smell to bother anyone. Our council actually makes money selling the product of our food waste, it was in the paper last year about the profit they had made which is great but I do wonder why they messed about with a system that worked!

I do have friends who do this elsewhere and it's not something I can emulate as I don't have room to store 3 weeks of food waste in my fridge and again it wouldn't really solve the problem as they are in all our neighbours bins too so we'd still get them.

I'd fight it if I were you it's awful having rotting food lying around in bins for weeks. With other waste I can understand as it helps people reduce waste in general but for food waste it needs to be collected weekly.

Our food waste is collected weekly - we don’t have much but I can’t imagine a 2 or 3 weekly collection - some people throw so much food away.

One way of avoiding maggots, BTW, is to keep any scraps of meat or fish in a bag in the freezer until the night before the bin men come. I always do this and have never had maggots.

I read somewhere that bluebottles can smell anything dead (I.e.meat or fish) from a mile away!

We don’t even have a food waste collection.

And we have to pay for garden waste collection if we want it.

If you have a garden there’s no reason not to compost it. You should try again. You obviously weren’t putting in the right mixture of greens and browns. Browns are easy to add to your peelings etc since everything seems to come in masses of cardboard nowadays.
Complaining will get you nowhere. The policy is designed to get you reducing your food waste and composting (and saves money for the councils)

I agree with you OP, it's disgusting.

We don't have food waste bins, it all has to go in the general waste, so nappies, peelings etc fester for a fortnight.

One of the good things about the weather being rubbish this summer is that the bins don't smell as bad.

we compost all raw peelings ourselves and it never smells. I put lots of shredded cardboard in to balance the ‘green’ to ‘brown’ as I once read in a composting book by Bob Flowerdew. If you get flies in the compost add a layer of soil on top and more cardboard to dry it out

Two ways that have really helped tackle fruit flies - I only get the odd one now.
No food or any type of fruit/veg on worktops- everything away in cupboards and then salt in your indoor food bin- every-time you empty it (would recommend every evening) then put salt in it- it apparently kills them.
Both the above have really helped in my household.

This is not a helpful comment. If you use a lot of produce, you will
inevitably produce a lot of food waste (tough stems, peels), to say nothing of things like coffee grounds, tea bags, and eggshells.

OP, I’m in Ayrshire and our food waste is collected weekly. It’s shocking that GCC have reduced collection such that this is becoming an unmanageable problem. Can you write your MP and MSP?

Our council make a profit selling the products of the food waste so I think you are wrong and it doesn't solve my issue anyway as my neighbours behaviour is also causing the problem for us, we can't control what they do.

A more frequent pick up, weekly is the solution to this and most agree with me.

Weekly recycling bottles, cans, plastic, food waste here. (Somerset) Rubbish 3 weekly. Garden waste pay extra for. Works fine.

Definitely try composting again OP. There should not be any smell.

We have a compost bin (looks a bit like a black plastic dalek, some councils sell them cheaply to you) and also a hot composter.

The hot composter is more expensive to buy but we've had ours for 8 years so it's a long term benefit. It is very well sealed so can't be infiltrated by rodents, it works really quickly to turn the contents into to compost, and zero risk of any smell emanating from it.

The black dalek is fine, it just works more slowly and there is the risk of rodent infiltration. It doesn't smell though.

@nonmerci99 Thank you for this comment, yes it's really shocking and I will complain and write to my MP and MSP's. Some posters don't seem to get that even if I did all the composting it still wouldn't change things as the neighbours bins are worse in many cases. We need a weekly uplift!

Thanks I will try the salt tip, I already do everything else you suggest but I haven't tried the salt.

We have this also in West Oxfordshire. I have my general waste bin cleaned and make sure no food goes in here but the bastarding flies still lay eggs in the creases

With food we freeze anything off plates, any meats chicken carcass etc. Veg peelings bread etc goes straight into the food waste bin

I dont think so. You just need to sort waste, reduce waste, compost.

Our waste is only every 4 weeks (not uk, so it’s hot hot all summer also). No problems.
We compost in garden everything possible, no flies or rats in compost or bad smell.
We used washable nappies and wipes to not have poop waste sitting in the bins for a month.

Our black bin after a month is barely 1/4 full. We have no separate food collection

@Caspianberg Perhaps it is the climate here as well in tandem with the bins, there is no poop or meat waste in my bins, my neighbours may be different. I already do all you suggest except compost for reasons already stated and even if I did neighbours waste would still impact on me. Increase frequency of collection along with mitigation is the only solution.

Excellent. Good to know you have the “solution”. Crack on then..

OP you’re part of the problem, not the solution.

Good luck! I actually just read about this issue in Glasgow Reddit so you are definitely not alone in being driven up the wall by fruit flies. :( Hopefully the council will get its act together.

🙄🙄🙄 You have no idea what you’re talking about, but at least you can feel smug and self-righteous about it!

What a ridiculous and ignorant thing to say, this post is about the issue of flies not about how to improve my recycling or reduce my environmental impact which I guess is probably a great deal less than most peoples.

@nonmerci99 Thanks 😊Although this is AIBU where the vipers are know to emerge!

Totally agree, OP. It's disgusting.

One more comment since so many of you do not even understand what OP is talking about (it’s almost like you don’t live in Scotland) — OP is not talking about her residual waste bin. Many councils in Scotland have a residual waste collection that is fairly infrequent, plus a food waste and recycling collection that is more frequent. The whole point of the food waste bin (which in my council is quite small and collected weekly) is explicitly to collect food waste that can be composted.

Chastising the OP for being wasteful is not just willfully obtuse, it’s veering into total ignorance. If you don’t understand the post, don’t comment. It’s not that complicated.