Can you fit a fortnight's worth of rubbish in a small wheelie bin?

[Loobeeloo]

I have 3 under 3 in my house as well as dh and now we are recycling we have managed to reduce our rubbish down to 4 bags a week.

The larger wheelie bins hold 4-6 bags I'm told (the council won't take them if the lids won't close fully) but I now see there are suggestions we will all get half size bins to avoid "bin envy"!

wheelie bins

How on earth will I get my rubbish down to just 3 bags a fortnight?

Loobeeloo

I am 99% sure that the practice of flushing dog shit down the loo is illegal, poo is very definitely not poo.

I think the major problem with animal faeces is that they can contain
all sorts of parasites and pathogens that can affect human beings, some
of them quite tragically. (Toxoplasmosis and leptospirosis spring to
mind... both can cause serious birth defects if passed from a pregnant
woman to her foetus). There's also a smorgasbord of worms and flukes
that can exist in various forms in poo and be transmitted to you through
direct contact.

AFAIK, sewage treatment is specific for human poo and cannot break down
the various animal poos. Dog poo, for example, is a true turd (I'm not
joking: that's the correct name for it!) and has a laminating outer
layer which protects the dog's intestines from mechanical damage as
bones and sharp bits of it's 'prey' pass through. This layer, once
hardened, resists breakdown of most treatments and can help to keep
parasitic larvae alive inside the turd, even through some pretty severe
chemical baths.

Cat poo has similar properties, although not entirely the same. The hair
component in cat poo resists breakdown as well and would probably
prevent the poo from succumbing to the usual methods in treatment works.
AFAIK, human poo is basically water soluble and that's the main
difference...

So probably best not to put it down your bog!

No I can't, my husband and I have to keep running to the dump which is 45 minutes away. And we have an extra bin. It stinks and I am afraid it will attract rats.

I think we could, just about, manage to use only one wheelie bin. ATM we have old-fashioned round bins, and usually put out one of them, well tamped down. We have one in disposable nappies and two in disposable nighttime nappies. But we recycle as much as poss, compost veg waste and shove as much other food waste as possible down the waste disposal unit. When we lived in a flat and had no garden or waste disposal unit we probably put out twice as much rubbish. (Plus, for one year, two in nappies at the same time.)

OUr neighbouring council are doing fortnightly collections, and most people seem to hate it.

LOLOL Califrau! He is mad inventor type so it would be quite feasible. But I am not made of plastic.

You can get dog loo's for the garden that break down dog poo into something. Its green and you put the poo in it, but thats about all I know. If anyone remembers the name of it can they let me know as I need one!!

Bibis I did not do it and in fact do not have a dog, my dear departed dad did but thank you for clarifying that.

Bibis I am slightly concerned that you are such a poo expert if you don't mind me saying so

Believe it or not it is called a ...dog loo.

We used to have one but our great Dane caused it to overflow, couldn't cope with the volume. Wormeries apparently can deal with all kinds of poo safely.

Thanks Liza
I never tried googling "dogloo"

Not sure if it has been mentioned, did anyone see BBC Breakfast this morning about rubish collections.

There was a lady on talking about her household waste and she had a t-shirt on saying "0 - Naughty in 5 seconds"

I have 4 children, and our bin allowance is half a big bin per fortnight, so that is the same as what you will have.

We rarely exceed it, but we do have FABULOUS recycling facilities.

We don't have a composter, so all our organic waste has to go in the bin.

The rest goes:
Tins, bottles, paper - in recycling over the road, daily.
Tetra briks, crinkly plastic, plastic bottles, plastic cartons, aluminium - to the recycling yard in our town, once or twice a week.
Batteries to battery collection points. Oil bottles ditto.

We live in Germany, where the supermarkets provide bins in the store, and you can dispose of excess wrapping there and then.

Thank you everyone. I had heard that the dog loos weren't that great - capacity and smells seemed to be the major problem. May have to give one a go tho' and see if it works....

Did anyone see the Jack Black film where he invents the spray that makes poo disappear....he called it Vapooorize!

Wouldn't that be fantastic!

Whatever you do, do not buy a dog loo! It is a disaster. We had one when we first got our dog. Urgh - I would retch every time I had to deposit poo in it - the smell of rotting / decomposing poo is something else! Once every few weeks (dependent on the size of the dog) you have to flush it through - which involves standing over the festering smelly thing holding a hosepipe for up to 10 minutes. Trust me, not a job you want to do too often.

I pick up my dog poo in decomposable bags (from all good pet shops) and then put it in our bin. I make sure the bag is tied up very well and put jeyes bin powder into the bin evey two days or so. The smell is under control.

As for the smaller weelie bin - madness!! I had an extra bag of rubbish today so my bin lid was slightly open and they refused to take it. (we are on fortnightly collections) They put a patronising note on the bin about reducing rubbish to save the environment. I recycle all I can, I have a compost heap AND a wormery, and take all that cannot go in the recycling bin to the out-of-town recycling point.
Some stuff just has to go in the bin. Their refusal to collect it meant I had to get in the car and drive to the rubbish tip to despose of my rubbish. (3 black sacks for 2 weeks, normally not even 2 bags) So I had to use my car. Very environmentally friendly that was!!
I was so cross I was practically spitting feathers.

In this consumer driven world, something has to change at the business end. Make companies reduce their packaging, do not punish individuals who are already trying to do their best!!

Loobeeloo

Fear not, I am not a poo expert, except in the fact that I have 4 children and am quite adept at changing nappies, wiping bottoms etc.

I googled the poo flushing thing, I knew that there was a reason but didn't know what it was, now I do

With 4 very young children we manage on about 3 sacks every 2 weeks which includes nappies for two of them! It all goes pearshaped at Christmas though, we have an extra bin due to amount of kids and they both are full to bursting point then........ Next year we will be burning all wrapping paper etc.

Have you guys considered that you are being environmentally irresponsible by feeding your young children and pets so much? If you didn't feed them so much they wouldn't produce so much poo. Not to mention the food you are wasting.

My area is going back to weekly collections but we are getting smaller bins. We have to keep our big bins for our recyled stuff. We just have a little back yard, all those bins in it...
Today I went to put some rubbish in the bin, the 2 week collection is Thurs so some of it has been sitting there ages, there were MAGGOTS all over the rim, lid and on the top bag of rubbish. I was nearly sick. And that has to sit in my yard for another two days till bin day so I won't be letting the kids outside tomorrow - ugh.

it's ridiculous innit

why aren't they having a go at the manufacturers who overpack food and stuff like toys? grrrr. Far easier to have a go at the consumer.

I haven't read the whole thread, but I think fortnightly collections are a bloody disgrace. I'm cynical about all of it; I don't believe they send all this stuff to the 'correct' places for recycling, and I don't believe that the council tax payer should be beaten with a stick, without a large juicy carrot in recompense.

It's a way for councils to save money. Before long, fines will be imposed. And it won't make a jot of difference to 'global warming,'

Tax packaging

Reduce council tax

easy but I bet lots of corporate lobbyists would have something to say about that...

4 of us, one in full time disp nappies.
fortnightly door-step recycling collections for - glass (in plastic bag), tins (in separate plastic bag), paper (in black box), green waste including cardboard, shredded paper and all food waste (in brown sacks).
plastic bottles I recycle and take to one of the numerous collection points around (I drive past 1/2 visiting friends in the next village, 4 on my way to visit my parents 15 mins away, there is one just down the road from pre-school)
tetrapak's I have started collecting and will take to a collection point, but thats at a tesco I rarely go to - so at the moment I have about 4 months worth squashed flat in a bag.
Which leaves us with less than a black bin bag a week, which includes nappies and dog poo (collected in tesco bags) - we don't have any sort of bin provided (our council thinks they encourage you to throw away more ), and brought a normal round black bin when we moved in. Occasionally we have a clear out that results in more rubbish, but that's every 6 months or so.

We don't have a wheelie bin, and are still on weekly collections. But I am terrible at remembering bin day, so tend to only put it out fortnightly anyway when I get woken up by the sound of the glass collection. I often chase the bin men with my box of stuff in my jammies! We usually have two Brabantia (20L pedal bin) sacks for the fortnight, but the children only live with me for half the week, so I guess that's the equivalent to one adult and one child. dh has about the same, so I guess between us we probably would do two black sacks in a fortnight. But the children are 6 and 8 so no nappies (although we mostly used cloth)