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.

we used to be able to recycle vegetable peelings with garden waste but they had to stop it due to people putting cooked vegetables in among the waste

They have a handle that locks them shut.

Yes! Exactly. This is the kind of food waste I'm talking about. Not raw fruit / veg /tea / coffee that is composted.

Maybe the question should have been about the awful amounts of food that is thrown away each week, and how that expensive waste could be prevented.

We don't have a composter and I have no desire to have a compost bin or similar. Food waste in this house is indeed peelings and scraps, as well as things like tea bags, coffee grounds.

Our council uses the collected food waste to make compost which they sell back to the residents to make money for waste collection. Seems sensible to me and I'm glad to not have the bother of doing it myself.

yes ok food waste is bad but some people are odd, it is their waste, also children can be fussy and leave food, as can many adults in fact.
i knew someone who roasted a chicken, ate for a family meal - 3 of them - and then threw the rest in the bin!

I don't have a composter or a.garden. I don't enjoy gardening. I use my food bin daily as we eat a lot of vegetables last week cauliflower cheese did a lot of waste. I am happy the council then uses this rather than it going to waste.

It is important to remember not everyone lives like you so different needs. If you don't need yours don't use it.

I quite often fill the big one in the summer and autumn with peelings and veg waste from my allotment as well as banana skins, tea bags etc.
I have 2 compost bins at home and a big one at my allotment but I only use them for garden waste as I have in the past had mice.

Personally, I would put the carcass from a chicken, fatty/gristly bits of meat, fish bones and skin, prawn and snail shells, and DD’s pizza crusts in a cooked food bin.

In more general food waste bins, all fruit and vegetable peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds and teabags.

We tried to add all the food peels egg shells etc to out garden compost pile, but the chickens spread the pile out all over the place so we make sure to keep it contained. They already got all leftovers.
Now the chickens are gone we use the food bin for peelings and the compost pile for garden waste
People in flats have no choice.

You seem to be implying that having your own composter is superior to using the council service and I'm not quite sure why?

I have an insinkerator waste disposal so barely throw away any food waste at all. All of it goes into the "chuffer" (that's what my kids call it!) We had it fitted because we're a large family and our bins would fill up quickly. The only things I don't put down there are avocado stones and mango hearts. It even crushes bones.

I'm another one that got rid of my garden composter due to rats. They loved the eggshells and potato peel. I'm grateful for the kerbside wastebin it enures my scraps, peel, bones and teabags don't go into landfill. You can be a low waste family but still need a foodbin

People need to think they are binning money with throwing perfectly good food away. Take the spag Bol I mentioned in a pp. That’s £1.80- £3.20 binned, depending on fat content of mince, veg, if tomatoes come from an economy tin of tomatoes or a pasta sauce.

They say an average person bins 70kg of edible food a year. I probably bin about 10-15% on mouldy food. That means someone is binning 120kg a year

Yes, you're right, if you'd asked a completely different question, "is food waste bad" or maybe "why do people throw away perfectly edible food" you would have got different answers.

Guess what OP, this little known problem is being tackled by a tiny NGO called the United Nations!!! Here's some really interesting stats. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/goal-12/ I've put them in a pic too in case you can't scroll down.

As it is about 17% of food waste is caused by consumers, putting it in a food waste bin is a hugely positive factor because it gets composted instead of being shoved into landfill, plus the cash-strapped councils get money for said compost. There's literally no downside.

If you had written "aren't I marvellous because I cook from scratch and eat my leftovers" in the first place, you wouldn't have four pages telling you why you're wrong . And you are marvellous! And so am I! My food waste bin is nothing but potato peels and avocado stones! But other people's lives maybe a bit more chaotic or disorganised and they have mouldy satsumas and forgotten cake so why don't we try being kind to them 👍

I'm in Melbourne and the local council's food waste collection goes into the garden bin, collected weekly.

It takes all food, including bones, oil, and used kitchen roll. No tea-bags because of the plastic.

I suppose it depends on what composting system is used. In this case a number of LAs are all in the same scheme, so there are economies of scale.

I put one small bag week into the garden bin as most veggie stuff goes into my own composter.

We Compost our veg peelings etc. Some weeks we don't have anything in the food waste bin, like you we only buy / cook what we will eat. We mainly use the food waste bin for meat bones as they can't go on the compost heap.
Our non-recyclable bin is only collected every 3 weeks now, not a problem as it doesn't smell as there is no food waste in it.

You’re being unreasonable.

we have two food waste caddy’s in our cupboard. One for compostable and one for not.

Agree we compost majority but there are things that our worms/compost can’t take. If you look it up worms don’t like citrus, they don’t like onions or avocado skins/seeds either.

there’s also the other food waste, cooked food is still wasted eg fish skins, bones, kids leave cereal/rice/pasta etc

plus not everyone has a garden and not everyone wants to make homemade compost as they have no gardening interest

Ah yes I do do that sometimes ! I love a broccoli soup too!

Doesn't the food waste go to large scale composting anyway, it's still better than throwing it into landfill to produce methane.

Why can’t food waste just go to landfill though? Surely it just composts down into soil eventually? Showing my ignorance!

I used to compost our veg, until I opened the lid and came face to face with about 20 mice! Never again. I probably only throw out a few squidgy lettuce leaves a week, but do have a lot of chicken bones and peelings.

Mine is used for tea bags, egg shells, veg peelings, orange peel, apple cores, grape stems...

Not in landfill, no. The conditions are wrong for proper composting, so it tends to decompose in way that creates a lot more methane (stronger greenhouse gas than CO2). And food attracts rats, flies and other vermin to landfill sites - none of those are a problem with an industrial composting system.

My reasons:

1. Although I do have a garden, I'm an absolutely terrible gardener and don't have much need for compost as a result. Therefore it's a bit pointless.
2. My small children aren't great at avoiding waste. We're working on it, but I'm not willing to make them eat what's on their plate or to not have enough when they are hungry.
3. I don't know how other people manage it, but I find meal planning really difficult with small humans who might eat 5 fish fingers and no potatoes one day and 1 fish finger and a heap of potatoes the next. Therefore there are leftovers. We mostly use the leftovers (often as adult lunch), but can't always.
4. We eat fish.

As it happens, my council has decided it's fine to move to fortnightly bin collections about 2 years before bringing in food waste bins, which is a recipe for disaster. It's the fortnightly bin collection that saves a bunch of money and makes the food waste bins worthwhile, btw.