Stinking wheelie bin - what is a childminder to do?

[gardenpixies32]

Not a nice topic but I need some tips, if anyone has any.

I have up to 5 children a week in nappies so naturally there are a lot of soiled nappies to change. Our wheelie bin stinks! I wont go into detail but it is so bad that I dread opening it to put anything inside. I change all nappies with disposible gloves, so when I am done changing a nappy, I pull the glove over the nappy and tie a knot in it. Even though you dont have to, I chose to use gloves as sometimes I change 3 nappies one after the other and it saves having to wash my hands 3 times in a row. Each time I change a nappy I use a new pair of gloves. Anyway, I phoned the council to ask it there was some sort of nappy bin type thing, they said no. Our bins are only empties once a fortnight, so you can imagine...sometimes there are as many as 10 dirty nappies a day! I hate to admit it but we now have maggots in our wheelie bin!

What do you childminders do?

I put my soiled nappies in a separate small bin and take them out at the end of each day to the garage and black bag them (we don't have wheelie bins here). However we have weekly collections and thus no maggot probs

I think you need to think about doing something similar and also can you take a bag of soiled nappies to your local tip in between collections?

Your bin will need disinfecting too

Would you consider bagging the nappy after gloving it, as an extra barrier to flies?

I feel v sorry for you x

Thanks for tips. I may have to visit the tip weekly, it is so nasty! They are double wrapped ie: 2 gloves and sealed with a knot! But maybe bagging them is a good idea. Luckily we do have a wheelie bin cleaner who disinfects and washes out the bin each fortnight.

Yuck!

my dh goes mad about this subject

i know put all nappies in nappy bags and put the nappy bags into a carrier bag at the end of the day i pop the carrier full of nappies into the bin

every 2 weeks when bins are collected i power wash bin and add some nice smelling liquid

this works in the winter but come summer the heat makes our bin smell worst

were lucky (i guess) as we dont have our bin on our property it stays outside our garden gate in a alley

Can you not put a flushable liner in the nappy and flush the poo away?

Perhaps you should consider whether the amount of waste generated is more suited to a trade waste contract?

PP - if that were the case, childcare costs for parents would esculate even more. I don't cant have more costs than I already do. My other alternative is to ask parents to take home their children's nappies and I dont want to have to go down that route!

Did you see my suggestion?

You can get wheelie bin disenfecting granules -jeyes do them. I have got them from Tesco in the past but b and q def do them.

A squirt of fly spray and then close the lid a couple times a week will help stop maggots.

I agree with bibbity - i used to regularly flush my daughters poos down the loo ((i used reusables and they would be in a nappy bin as i would only wash every 2-3 days and hardly any smell)... i know not all poos are flushable but it will help.
Could you encourage the parents to use resuables, (there are grants available to get started for most parents) that way they can take them home at the end of the day and you would not be throwing them in your bin.
Or do a contract with a nappy service where they drop off nappies and pick them up to wash and drop off again ... (i am sure this would cost the same for parents as disposables cost)
that way you could increase your credentials by coming an environmentally friendly childminder!

bodily waste isn't counted as household rubbish so where-ever possible you should flush in wc. The council could decline to take your rubbish if you have large quantities ... they can insist you have a clinical and/or trade waste collection if they have issues with the quantity or nature of your waste.

Double or triple wrap the nappies, using gloves and nappy sacks (I ask parents to supply nappy sacks but I supply gloves). Wash & disinfect your bin every time its emptied and add extra disinfectant between collections. Frequent squirts of fly spray is a good idea too.

Get a wheelie bin cleaning service. They come once a month after the bin is emptied and it makes a massive difference.

If you explained the problem to parents and asked them to take their child's nappies home to put in their own bin, do you think they would be ok about it? I would, but then my DS is in cloth.

Id be annoyed if my cm made me take my son's dirty nappies home.

Flush the poo down the loo!

What exactly is the problem with this?

I feel like I'm going mad that this doesn't seem to occur to people .

Hi BBBH, without going into too much detail, not all babies do grown up looking poos! Most of them are a smeary mess that you cant just plop down the loo and I draw the line at scraping a smeary poo out of a nappy. What about the wipes then, they can often be filthy and you cant flush them down the loo? Even if you could flush wipes down the loo, I wouldnt as I do not want to run the risk of blocking up my toilet. Plus, even if I did this, the nappy wont be completely free of mess. My other problem with that is I only have an upstair loo. Last Wednesday, for example, I changed 10 soiled nappies. That would mean leaving 3 children under 16 months alone to go up and down the stairs to the loo 10 times. I think being a mum to one baby at a time is very different to having 3 babies plus up to 3 or 4 older children!

I have a lot of friends with children who are not childminders and one thing I hear a lot is how they dont mind their own children's nappies but wouldnt like to change someone elses child! At the end of the day, I am not their mother and I dont really want to become that intimate with their nappies. I am happy to change nappies and would never complain about that.

I plan to ring local nurseries to ask what they do. I may also going to ask parents to provide nappy liners that I can flush down the loo.

You look after 6 to 7 children by yourself? I though CM could only have a max of 2 under 2 and 3 under 5, and no more than 3 or 4 in total, or am I completely wrong?

I would suggest getting a proper nappy bin, wrap the nappy in the glove, then put in a nappy bag and into the bin. As long as you empty it everyday it should be fine, as everything will then be sealed in properly IYSWIM.

I have a variation for 4 under 5's and I can still look after 3 5-8 year olds and I can care for a 'reasonable' amount of over 8's (they dont give you a number). So, yes, I can be 7 under 8's!

No, not all baby poos are solid and yes, sometimes the wipes get very dirty. But there really is no reason at all to have a whole heap of solid little poos in your wheelie bin every week. Even if the babies you are looking after are so young that they are not weaned and have very soft poos, most of it will not be stinking out your wheelie bin if you line with a disposable liner and flush that down the loo.

Double wrapping nappies full of shit and using a pair of disposable gloves for each change and throwing those away too, all to end up in landfill - that is a really deeply antisocially enviornmentally unfriendly thing to do.

I think by law we should put nappies in the yellow medical bags that are taken away and burnt (like hospitals use) and I think a lot of large commercial nurseries do this too.

BBBH - we HAVE to use gloves, and we HAVE to double wrap in nappy bags.

For my own children, and two minded children I used reusable nappies and sent dirty nappies and wipes home, but not every parent wants to do this.

You can use one of those nappy wrap bins, but i have found them expensive for the replacement bags and they are a bugger to clean!

Booh As a childminder you don't have to use gloves. I don't, I was inspected last week and wasn't questioned as to why I didn't wear any. I use antibac gel in between children and then wash hands at the end. It might be considered good practice, but they are not compulsory and you can protect yourself and children from cross-infection without them.

BBBH - Deeply unsocial or not, their shit (as you refered to it as) will end up in the landfill if they were at home! The reason I posted was to ask CM's advice on what THEY do, not what a parent with one baby in nappies does!

I will use reusable nappies with my own children. I cannot tell parent they are antisocial and unfriendly because they choose not to use reusables!

Invest in a jet washer and clean out your bin regularly.

I am lucky that I have a toilet next to my nappy changing table, so I flush 'easy' poos. I use gloves and bags and hate the thought of the landfill.

I think some nurseries have a nappy macerator (sp?), but that just adds to the algael (sp?) bloom in the rivers, so I don't know what the answer is.

Fortnightly collections are starting in my area in September and I'm dreading it.
I'm thinking about putting all the nappies in a carrier bag and taking them to a street bin at the end of the day, I cannot bear the thought of a smelly nappy being in my bin for a fortnight.
And I do flush the poo down the loo but sometimes it just sticks to the nappy and there's no way of getting it off.