Food Waste Caddy and Bin - OK? or Not?

Begonia

My local council (Northampton) are about to impose these on us any day quite soon.

We are due to get a Brown Indoor Caddy (with lid and handle for the kitchen worktop and a Brown Outdoor Bin (with lock and handle).

I must admit to feeling quite 'anti-green' about using these. They do sound quite obnoxious but I don't know of anyone using them and so they might actually not be too bad.

As to where we are supposed to put these things, I am not quite sure. We already have:

1 large Black Wheely Bin - for General Waste
1 large Brown Wheely Bin - for Garden Waste
1 open Bin - for Paper Waste
1 open Bin - for Plastic Recyclables

We have a Calendar to help define the Collection Dates. On the day before collection some of my neighbours start putting their 'Bins' out as early as 2pm. They clutter up the pathways on, what would be a very nice 'middle market' private residential development (highly tended and very neat ciultivated gardens, modern cars, etc, etc). When the 'bin men' have been , the place can look like a hurricane has hit the place as they just chuck the empty bins back towards the houses in an 'any old how' fashion. In fact, IMHO, these can look like litter themselves.

We do not have room at the front of our house to store all of these bins. I keep the car at the fron of the house in front of the garage door. Why? Well the garage is full of other stuff and the car is too big to go into it anyhow. In fact, everyone keeps their car in freont of their garage. These garages are garages only by technical definition, IMHO, and are actually useless for keeping other than a very small car inside them.

On the 'New Food Bin' leaflet it says, "Please line your bins with either newspaper or cornstarch liner, which latter can be bought from a local retailer."

Aaaargh! What with the cost of the bins to the council, all the water used in washing the bins out and rinsing the bottles and plastics that go in them, this whole thing is now beyond being an imposition and is utterly beyond a joke.

My house has not been designed to cope with these things!

Sorry! Please add the Glass Bottles open Bin to the list above. That will then make it SEVEN bins in total.

Do you have these food bin things?

Got any comments? Do you love them or hate them? Are they vital or unnecessary? Is there a better way than seven household bins?

IronGiant

Could you repeat the question?  

kav

First world problems...

Begonia

I really would like to see some government effort to make stores and supermarkets massivley cut down on packaging too.

I don't see any effort being made at all.

Rather than plastic bags, I'd like to see paper bags in the supermarkets too.

I feel the public are being forced to be responsible and caring about waste, whilst shops, manufacturers and wholesalers are not made to do anything!

Begonia

Question(s ) duly added.

(Must have fallen into one of the bins...)

tonyrees687

Totally agree with you.But I take my extra waste to the dump not very environmentally friendly because I use my car to take it there ,But it saves more bin boxes in front of my house which I don't have room for.

Berties

##

It isn't my responsbility to wash them out, they're thrown in each bin dirty.

Ian J

We've had the little food bins for a year or two but I stopped using it after the first couple of weeks. The contents are supposed to be deposited into the garden refuse bin but having gone to the trouble of putting all of the food waste into compostable food bags the binmen decided that they were just ordinary plastic bags and refused to take them - thus ending my contribution to food recycling

IronGiant

  We have a kitchen caddy and a bucket sized bigger mini-bin that gets picked up every week.   Works very well and much better than putting it into a big bin as the little ones are easily washed out. We use the cornstarch bags which do seep liquid a bit but help keep them a bit cleaner and if you tie them off as soon as they are full seem to keep the flies at bay.  We then have a recycling bin and a rubbish bin that are emptied alternate weeks.  Any more than that and we'd not have the room to store them out of the way, so I feel your pain.

jenam93

We used to have seperate bins for plastic/glass and paper, but the collection lorry always threw everything into the same compartments anyway.

We now have a black bin for general waste, green bin for garden waste and a blue bin for recycling glass/plastic/paper.

The last time I was at the dump I noticed a stack of brown bins so I assume we are to get a food bin or similar soon too.