To not see the need for food waste bins?

[Notinmylifethyme]

I mean the plastic bins councils supply where excess cooked food is dumped.

I live on a budget. I cook. Veg scraps go in a composter (I have a garden so obviously referring to my situation). I sometimes batch cook. I rework leftovers. I use my freezer. Basically, it doesn't really matter how much I cook, we only put on our plates what we are going to eat.

Am I so unusual? My council are about to spend a couple of million on food waste bins. I'm quite shocked by it.

Our council won't collect them mixed. Tins and glass in one, plastic in the other or they tag it and won't collect them.

Most households fill up their food bins? We do, it's always full of potato and veg peelings, broccoli stalks etc, egg shells, chicken carcasses, apple cores etc.

The food waste compost site is reasonably big in our area and is full. It's quite an expense for the council to get rid of/compost all the food waste.

The council I lived under in 2009 brought out food waste caddies. Two years later, they were stopped as only about 17% residents put them out. My parents only put in the non edible things of food - peelings etc and teabags. Perhaps the odd manky satsuma.

People are throwing away perfectly edible food. I heard of people make a spag bol, serve two thirds of it, then bin the rest. Put it in the fridge and stretch it out with a tin of pulses or chopped tomatoes for another meal or keep it as it is for a filling for two people's jacket spuds.

I have seen customers who said that we should not be selling something that is 2 hours out of date. Most fresh products have a time on them. That's the time it was made/packaged in the factory, not the best before time!

I have 2 food waste bins - one for coffee grounds, egg shells, banana peel and anything non-cooked vege waste for compost in garden.
And the council collection food waste bin - for things I don't want to go into the compost.

Our council makes bio-fuel with the compost they collect.

Even the bones of a well used Mumsnet chicken end up in the food waste eventually.

Don't throw away broccoli stalks! They have the more nutrients than the florets. Blitz them up into soup.

Ive seen them little green food bins my god they make me sick more so when the truck comes to empty them i have to look away.😷

We have them here and I always fill mine. I have land and a compost heap but I won’t put scraps on it as we would get vermin. We have chickens but you really
shouldnt give them scraps. So veg and fruit peelings and cores etc. There are five of us so we get through a lot.

I love mine.

I have a decent garden but putting food scraps in the composter just has the deer at it.

Our bins are only collected three weekly but the food waste goes every week. It's fine because the main bin doesn't really smell.

We don't waste food but have a lot of peelings.

My block has a giant food bin that gets emptied every week, & all the flats have caddies.

I’m veggie & mainly cook from scratch so it’s peel, onion skin, apple cores & coffee grounds in mine mostly.

I’m glad a balcony composter works for the OP’s friend’s flowers, but my balcony is my cat’s outdoor playground so it wouldn’t work for us - and given how little food waste I generate, it would probably take forever to have enough compost to be any use.

I wasn’t saying that because I don’t use a food waste bin nobody should! Just explaining why I don’t. Chicken bones go down the insinkerator (although my dogs do eat raw chicken wings every morning for nice clean teeth)

Insinkerator - food muncher thingie in the sink.

I also only put raw vegetable and plant matter in the compost, plus a bit of paper/cardboard and wool

Or wants a composter.

I lovr mine, have it beside me as I prep , eggshells, fruit and veg peel/ ends, tww wee a bags and coffee grouts have a place to go and stop my normal bin getting smelly, food caddy goes a out every week whereas other waste alternates with recycling so hangs about about, Caddy removes all the smelly bits from my kitchen

It appears you didn't/don't know that chicken bones (and other meat bones) also count as food waste and, while you can't compost them in your garden, they can go in your council collected food caddy.

Instead, you are sending them needlessly to landfill. Please stop doing that. You can also put eggshells, fruit peel, teabags and coffee grounds into the food caddy too.

Food caddies are not pointless at all. Ours is full every week.

Because you personally don't make use of one you can't see the value of it for anybody or the environment?
Seems rather narrow minded. Of course they're useful. Not everyone has a 'composter' and living on a budget doesn't mean you don't throw away scraps or rotten food.

I eat them raw as I chop the broccoli. 😋

I agree there's too much food waste but even during the war people were issued with seperate food waste bins. This was a time of rationing when food had to go as far as possible. It was also a time when fast food and "snacks" as such didn't exist. People only generally ate at meal times and nowhere near as much as we do today, with or without the war.

I find it really odd that some councils still don't have food waste bins separate from other waste. Our council is very good for recycling, food waste goes to a massive bio digester, (I don't think I would want to live near it though) we can line our caddy's with plastic bags or paper and those are raked out and incinerated, the heat powers the plant.
We don't have a compost bin, well we did but the food scraps attracted vermin and also not being very keen gardeners I had no use for the compost I was making. So I am very happy that there is a food waste collection service and a (extra charge) garden waste collection.
There is talk of moving to monthly black bin collections which for us wouldn't be a problem because it is rarely even half full each fortnight. But I would think that lots of people, eg families with babies, a monthly collection would be grim without a different collection scheme for nappies and plenty of other exceptions.

We chuck it in the black bin.

My neighbour has been known to put it in with the recycling.🤦🏻‍♀️

As I do, currently I live in an area where there are several blocks of flats close to each other, each "block" of between 6-18 residents has 2 massive blue bins and 2 massive black bins for recycling and general waste.

I think this move to make recycling rules the same throughout England is great in principle, but I can't quite see how this is going to work in such similar apartment/flat situations, where eventually there will need to be 2 different types of recycling bins (to separate cardboard/paper from plastic/metal and glass), plus general waste (all 4 current bins are usually full), plus a bin for compostable food waste - so 4 different kinds of bins (I don't think they could really get rid of any of the black bins). I think it's a brilliant idea if it means less stuff going to landfill, especially for those of us without gardens, but logistically it might be quite difficult to implement in some areas.

I can't compost the cooked bones (chicken/fish) without one. The garden composter can only take raw veg peelings and human hair/nails.

DDog does eat a fair few veg ends but not all of them!

My new build block of 30 flats has a big food waste bin & separate bins for cardboard, plastics, paper, tins / aerosols & glass as well as the ordinary waste bins.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who roots through the cardboard bin when I need a box for something, so that works quite well.

The local houses have kerbside textile & electrical recycling which we don’t yet, so it would be helpful to have that at some point.

the bins provided by the council for food waste are normally quite small arent they?
surely they will attract rats?