what size kitchen bin?

[chandellina]

Hi, sorry for such a mundane question but having rented for years I am finally the proud prospective buyer of a kitchen bin. I am ordering online so am finding it hard to figure out the right size and just wonder what people have found to be a suitable size bin for a family with two small children?! 30 litre?? 50 litre??
thanks!

I'd go with the bigger one personally as I'm always emptying ours or putting stuff in carriers next to the bin

Happy shopping!

I have a 50l and wouldn't want a smaller one

I'd say 30l is right. Any bigger and it becomes irritatingly heavy to carry outside. 30l fills a normal black bin bag with enough room to tie it up IYSWIM.

thanks!! does 50l require special bags? I don't know what our last one was but regular bin bags fit easily with a bit of leftover space. Am I right to think 30l is standard? sorry to be so thick. I can see the measurements given on specific bins but the difference in size of the 30l and 50l isn't that great.

yes you need to get the larger bags but you can get a roll of them from the supermarket

Do not whatever you do get a tall thin bin.

Sure they take up less space

Sure you can get some funky retro looking ones.

But I promise you will be driven crazy trying to wrestle the full bin bag out
without it getting stuck or ripping the bag.

i'm taking the sort of safe road and getting a Brabantia 30 litre pedal bin. Hopefully it won't feel too thin and tall! opted not to get 50 litre because I'm expecting my council to put in a new recycling regime soon where most of the kitchen waste gets separated.
thanks for all the input!

We have 3 x 20 litre kitchen bins supplied by the local council, they are colour coded with lockdown lids, fold out carrying handles and are stackable for space saving.

Do not get a tall thin round one (eg 30L Brabantia posh one) - stuff gets stuck long before the plastic bag is full and it's a right pain. I'd go for a classic plastic rectangular fliptop but MrNC says they're ugly (not disagreeing...)

Also depends how much stuff goes in other bins - so much goes in our orange-bag recycling bin that we only empty the kitchen bin once a week, and that because nighttime nappies reek rather than the bin being full! MrNC gets the joy of emptying the bloody thing - the bags aways get stuck either on the handle or a hole from something stuck.

Does your council not fine you for putting plastic bags and nappies in bins?

We've got a 40L Brabantia and it's about right I'd say (we separate out recycling). No problems getting the bin bag out either as the Brabantia bins have air vents which stop the suction effect (or at least mine does).

We take the opposite approach - we deliberately have a small (12l) kitchen bin that is emptied either every day or every other day. We find that we don't throw much away nowadays - most goes into recycling or compost - so with the 40l bin, it would get smelly long before it got full.

This is our bin: www.franke.com/kitchensystems/uk/en/home/products/byinstallationtype/waste_management/built-in/waste_bin.html

We have larger bins for recycling in the utility room.

What Grendelsmumsaid.

Though to be fair, in our part of Oz we have three wheelies outside; a giant one for recycling, one for garden and a smaller one for general stuff.

We also compost everything we can in one of those kitchen top composters from Aldi, small so it gets emptied often into the wormery and doesn't stink.

conculainey - er - I don't know any English borough that recycles nappies or plastic bags, so they have to go in the bin.
We have orange bags for all paper, card, cartons, tetrapaks, cans, glass, plastic bottles and clean plastic trays - none of which are allowed in bins now.
Garden waste also has to be bagged separately and you have to pay extra to get it taken.
So the kitchen bin contains non-home-compostable food waste, a few nappies, the odd bit of plastic film, and that's about it. The local supermarket will take plastic bags and clean packaging for recycling, too.

Different boroughs will be different.

We are not allowed to bag anything and will be fined for doing so, bags are not permitted in any of our bins at all. We have 3 main bins, one for bio waste including leftover food, one for recycled plastics and paper and a bin for general non recyclable waste except glass which must go into a seperate open crate. Nappies must be placed into a yellow biobag which is collected every 2 weeks and incinerated, all other bins are collected on a fortnighly basis with several collection points with large bins for old clothing, shoes, glass and timber all of which is recycled.

It's the opposite in many councils - all waste going into our wheelie bins must be bagged, or non-icky like polystyrene.
Where do you live - never heard of nappy hazwaste collection!

North Down North Ireland, The bag ban is in place here so as the council can see into each bin before emptying them, plastic shopping bags are also banned but there are loads of shops that take them of you. Plastic shopping bags will have to be bought later this year with the N.I goverment trying to put a 30 pence price tag on each one, Wales will also have to pay for shopping bags later this year. Belfast has a maSsive incinerator which burns all nappies and even household sewage is burnt there though not all councils in N.I insist in keeping nappies seperate.

Ah, very interesting!
As you can probably tell I used to work in waste policy and delivery for England and what used to do my nut is how the vast majority of the population are totally against any form of energy from waste, aka incineration, cos it's like scary and polluting and stuff (despite the fact it isn't).

Except in ex-manufacturing regions where they do support it but as each county is now supposed to dispose of waste within its borders when current landfill agreements run out, they don't have enough and can't accept more...

Retailers here have enough clout that ministers won't support a bag ban (it doesn't actually reduce the amount of plastic used but does reduce litter hugely), despite the fact it's got to be the first ever tax that's actually popular with people!

Notcitrus..The bag tax is an excellent enviromental project imo, the south of Ireland introduced a bag tax a few years ago and the country has benefited greatly since with little to no rubbish blowing around the streets and countryside, it is something that needs to be done when people take no responsibility for their enviroment.
To the best of my knowledge the incinerator in Belfast is used to create energy from the waste gases which are carefully filtered via cats before exiting to the atmosphere, another plan which could be active soon is a charge added to cremation in the Belfast crematorium due to the ammount of mercury in people teeth fillings, again a catalitic convertor will be used to prevent the mercury from entering the atmosphere but will need to be paid for via increased charges.
I understand that all of N.I sludge waste from sewers is intended to be incinerated very soon instead of being spread on the land, you may find the link intresting.
www.niwater.com/incinerator.asp

well we got our 30 litre Brabantia and so far so good. I can see the advantage of a wider rim for emptying a dust pan and the like, but my friend's 50 litre touch top one seems just too big to me. For some reason the 40 litre one on Amazon cost a lot more than any other size so I didn't consider it.
I don't mind emptying a little more often. My former council had us on a pilot recycling all kitchen waste and I think the current council will follow eventually. In my new council we can recycle plastic bags, which is great, but not plastic food containers like yogurt containers, which isn't!

I wish our local council (SE England) had such policies, I have a weekly bag of used nappies which I'd love to dispose of properly but no it goes in the general waste bin. That aside our usual weekly garbage load is about one 30-l bag's worth.
There is a 'recycling' bin but the only plastics they'll take are milk jugs (no lids). We do recycle loads of cardboard and paper, and also set aside all our Tetrapaks to drop them into a special container at the tip every couple of months.

FWIW I have the standard 30-l rectangular flip-top plastic bin, it's fine and does the job AND is easy to get the bin bag out. It does help that I specifically designed an open space to store the bin under a small countertop when we redid our kitchen. So it's not too visible but easily accessible - I hate those little undersink bins as a) they're too small and b) when you're holding a dirty drippy item you don't want to fuss with opening a door to get to the bin.

I've checked out the advice about brabantia bins but still not sure if I should be getting a tall 30l bin or go for the larger 50l, my kitchen is big enough to take it but how are the touch top bins, do the catches last or should I go with a basic lid type one. I can't believe how much choice there is these days and all for a kitchen bin....any help would be appreciated.