I give up with the food caddy recycling scheme for food waste

[lulumama]

just went outside to get the food caddy... it was lying on its side, still half filled with food, and full of flies

have taken it into the back garden to pressure wash it and it is minging !! still bits of manky food stuck to the sides

it is foul, and i don;t see the point of it ! we have no less bin bags, i am still having to go to the tip, and in summer it is going to be even worse, with the smell and the flies

it is just revolting

euch - what scheme is this?

Can you not have a compsot heap for veggie peelings and stuff?

you have one small caddy in the kitchen and a large one outside, you put all your food waste in the little one, and then when it is full, empty it into the big one outside. once a week, the council come and collect it. but they dont; empty them properly so they get all manky.

no compost heap as the dogs would eat the contents !

do they not give you liners?

LOL at your doggies eating the compost heap = they would as well

i got some biodegradable bags (starch) for said food caddy, in supermarket

At least your council comes once a wk - our recyclable bin is emptied once a fortnight. Truly puke worthy. Got pigs now so that solves waste food problem!

you need a wormery. dogs cant get in

Can you not get a container composter that your dog can't get at? My ILs have one of those tumble ones that they say works really well.

they would ruby!

i hvae seen those mrsclinton, but i am so fecked off with the whole thing, it is making no differnce to the amount of rubbish we create! and i recycle paper, tins, glass , plastics and cardboard!

also, i had to wait 6 weeks and phone the council 3 times to get the caddy, then they broke it, and i am still waiting for a replacemtn, lukcily my neighbour had a spare as they got 2 delivered.

we're the same lulu but two week collection for green stuff. it makes me mad, the queue for the tip is really long now, you used to be able to just go in really quickly. people always honk you as you're trying to find the correct recycling thing.

i hose mine out but expect maggots in the summer.

it is such a PITA! i go to the tip 9 am on a weekday morning, seem to miss the queues

telleth me more about wormeries and dog proof composting

For food waste, you really need a Bokashi bin - it sort of pickles the food so that you can put everything in there, and its not attractive to rats once tipped into a composting bin. See here for more details.

When my mums dogs were alive, they couldn't get into the big plastic compost bins she used for veg waste - and you get them cheap through the council (the Bokashi bins too).

A Green Johanna may also be a good option for you see here

thank you for the links, will check those out

Reading this with interest as our council is introducing the same sort of scheme in September. I already compost fruit and veg scraps but we do sometimes throw away cooked food. I have wondered about getting a Bokashi bin as I wasn't sure about having the cooked food waste hanging around. And I can't imagine our current contractors being terribly dedicated to emptying the bins properly.

But does anyone have any more info about the actual process of making the microbial culture that goes into the bran?

Our Green bin is a wheely bin size and is for everything that can be biodegraded, so food, cardboard, garden waste etc. It's collected once a fortnight. I find that by putting drier stuff in the bottom (cardboard, woody garden clippings, the food waste doesn't make the bin as dirty - the only problem I had last year was when they refused to take it as it was too heavy - we'd filled it with rotten windfall apples from our (now pruned) over prolific tree and dh had to fork them out. Now after 2 weeks of hot weather that truly was

Mummypig- all the details I can find are that they brew up the blend of effective bacteria with molasses, and then dry it onto the bran in such a way that its stable, but once food is added the bacteria leap into life and start digesting/fermenting it. We just buy a big bucket of bran at a time - 1kg is 5.00, and lasts around 4 months for us, so doesn't cost a lot.

I was sceptical about it, but it really does work - we moved the compost bins the other day, and the food waste from the bokashi was totally composted, and really doesn't smell - much, much less than the caddy for teabags and peelings that get emptied every 3 days or so, when you'd expect that the bokashi (filled up over 3 or so weeks with everything inc meat, fish, bones, and then left to ferment for a further 2 weeks) would reek to high heaven.

Thanks for the info cmotdibbler, I'm seriously thinking of getting some. What do you do when you're waiting for the filled tub to ferment, do you have a second tub?

Yes - we have two tubs. Our council had a deal that you could get two,plus a months worth of bran for 25 quid through here

Thanks