To be fussy about my wheelie bin?

We have one grey for household rubbish one green for recycling can't put any garden waste in they are emptied for nightly alternate they are checked and if anything I them what shouldn't be is left outside or full bin is left depending on which. bin man checks them ?

Ladies, using plastic bags is bad for the environment. Loose rubbish in all bins would save so much precious oil.

Before my MIL went into a home she used to bag up all her incontinence pads and put them in the bin. You can imagine the stink by the time the bin was emptied (and the weight! She produced a lot more than a small baby with disposable nappies) When I rang the Council I was told "That's fine they just go in the bin" I did feel for the unfortunate bin men.

*Phoebes"

In Spain it took me a while to work out that "whiffy" means "why-fy"

I only think about my wheelie bins when they have to be hitched onto the car and towed down the hill to where the bin lorry comes (we're not on a road) and then back up again afterwards, though actually Minibags is getting quite good at the towing back up when empty after she gets off the school bus, bless her cotton socks viscose tights.

They are not what you careful people would call clean, inside or out, but none of it smelly dirt so I don't care.

My council does not allow food waste in the general waste bin. I have a separate bin for waste food (cooked) and a black bin for general waste into which goes only non-recyclable plastic or mixed materials. Everything else is recycled or composted. We have our own system of recycling boxes on shelving outside the back door and my husband polices our waste with hawk eyes to spot anything potentially going into general waste that can be recycled. Until they had a recycling facility at work he also used to bring ALL of the recycling home from his office.

I have a friend who never lines even her kitchen bin, and rarely washes it. I don't know how she can bear the stink! I have often thought I might say something, but I would hate to offend her - it would be a bit like telling someone they had body-odour.
I'm a bit OCD about bins, I like them clean and odour-free!

We have to pack our food waste in biodegradable bags and it is collected weekly, where other rubbish isn't. I walk around our village a lot, including on bin days and I am not aware of any bins smelling. All food waste is no more than a week old and in sealed plastic bags in sealed containers.

In our area General Rubbish goes into landfill so if it is in plastic bags, they will take forever to break down, whereas some of the contents might be degradable (vacuum cleaner dust, for instance).

Interesting thread. Like most of us, we have the three bins plus a little one for food waste. But where do you put used cat litter? I've only got the one cat who does go out to play but comes back indoors when he needs to "go" so I have to clean out his litter tray daily. Solid waste gets flushed but the wet clumps of litter I tie up in a nappy sack and put in the general waste bin. By then end of the fortnight between collections the bin smells pretty ripe! Any suggestions?

i only have room for one bin as my house was built before the other bins [garden waste and recycling] were invented.
for several years i had the "pull out" service as i'm disabled, lived alone and couldn't get the bin out on to the road. my bin was lovely and clean and as i too bag everything it wasn't smelly.
then my daughter and grandaughters moved in with me so i couldn't have the pull out service any more. so it's now my younger grandaughter's job to take the bin out and bring it back.
sounds simple? the first week she couldn't find "our" bin to bring back and we had to have what was left outside. so i put our house number on it and thought that was that.
no it wasn't - the second week she couldn't find the bin i'd labelled and brought back one of the most evil smelling bins i've ever smelled.
that one wasn't labelled with our number but she couldn't find it when she went to get a bin in. that one smelled rather better [but it wasn't MY bin!].
in the end, after marking the space on the lids several times with our number i gave in and bought some big white numbers and stuck one lot on the side and another lot on the lid. thankfully my grandaughter was able to lay claim to our new bin and we've now used it for about three weeks.
i will have to get it clean and non-smelly though as i can't abide it [it lives just outside my front door] but i'm not too sure what to use ............... no running water at the front of the house and i'm disabled so can't go to and fro with buckets - and there's nowhere for the dirty water to go.
but i'm sure i saw several years ago some sort of powder for keeping bins smell free - can't find it now though ......... typical.
we had a big bin for years and then, last year, the council in its infinite wisdom decided that they'd change to a smaller one - which was ok as i lived alone. now though with four people in the house we fill this bin completely every week - and the council will be cutting back to a fortnightly collection later this year!!
sorry to go on for so long - i could go on about the recycling bin and the fact that i'd have to pay for a garden waste bin but i think that's for another time!

We have 3 wheelie bins - general, recycling and garden. Also food recycling with small inside one & biodegradable bags and a bottle one. We pay £10 a month for the general bin to be cleaned and a new bag inserted. We could do it ourselves but the cleaning men generally have come from being out of work to having this business then move on to something better paid so we keep using them. My small general kitchen bin has a bag inside so it is tied and then goes in the big wheelie bin's bag. They do get smelly don't they? I was skeptical about the food waste but what a lot is generated from peelings and skins for 2 people! We don't have a lot of out of date stuff either but was surprised at the amount we recycle.

The answer lies with the local authorities. They need to bring back weekly bin emptying. Food waste involving meat or fish, has to be wrapped securely in polythene. Paper just does not do the job. Have you ever walked down a street when the bins are on the kerbside awaiting emptying? You can definitely tell by the stink which ones have unwrapped food in them. Not healthy. Attracts flies for one thing.

Yes. Definitely use bio-degradable bags.

A lot of plastic bags, especially those used for food recycling are made from maize and are compostable and if they got to the see would biodegrade within days.

The real culprit for plastic pollution are the plastic shopping bags that used to be handed out at super markets and plastic bottles. My one big black plastic month that go into the rubbish cart and then into the landfill site is highly unlikely to end up in an ocean.

I think all these problems need to be seen in proportion.

Ele19 - the bags I use are compostable. Carolpaint cooked slop can be flushed down the toilet Are you mad!!! Do you know how much is spent on unblocking drains because of idiots like you! I can only hope your post was an attempt at a wind-up.

Do you not realise that using all those plastic bin bags in your wheelie bins is VERY bad for the environment!! Google plastic in our oceans and it makes sober reading. So PLEASE PLEASE stop buying bin bags and help reduce the impact of this manmade disaster. And yes I mean ALL OF YOU not just the obsessive compulsive cleaners...

Hello

We have two wheelie bins - black for general rubbish and green for recycling. Both emptied fortnightly.
All paper and card, plus (washed) tins, glass and (recyclable) plastic go loose into the green one, most other rubbish is collected in the black bag lining the kitchen bin and knotted before it goes into the black bin, while bedroom and bathroom bins are emptied into the large bags that 9 toilet rolls come in, and popped in too.
BUT I do empty my vacuum directly into the black bin as a bit of dust isn't going to attract flies, rats etc.

Oh sod it.

Get stuffed.

Oh I could be so assertive in reply to that silly post. But it would be deleted and I would probably be barred. (I'm already on the short list)

This is all trivia, many cases of ocd. Get on and get a life. Indinana has told you how to compost. Cooked slop can be flushed down the toilet. Wimps United. Ran a course on female assertiveness, one woman could not bring herself to say 'fleas', is that how you wish to be? ?

My Greek husband calls them"Willy Beans!"

I try to dump as little rubbish as possible and have exchanged my larger wheeled bins for small ones.I have more in the recycling bin than general waste,I also pay £30 a year for a garden bin.I collect all foil and take it to a collection point.
Whatever can go into charity bags does.
I am concerned by the amount of plastic that I put in the bin which is not recyclable ,so would not add to that by wrapping my rubbish in plastic bags.
I thought the idea now was that we dumped less plastic bags into land fill.
It,s not the best job to wash out a bin but it is soon over.

Those food waste bins - urgh. The ones that our Council provides have ridges (air-holes) and bits of food that escape collect in there - and as I walk past the houses in my street after the food waste truck has been I have to hold my nose (because most people don't clean them after). Yuk. I don't use mine. I just try and throw away as little food waste as possible.

I used to carefully separate everything for recycling until I realised that the recycling truck men just chuck everything into one big yellow wheelie bin . So despite having two different coloured recycling crates (3 if I count the food waste bin), I only use one.

We have:
A grey one - General rubbish.
A green one - garden waste.
A red one - paper, card, tins.

Excellent system.

But I get a bit annoyed when things like marg containers say "recyclable" but our council hasn't got the facility for it. Or rather I get annoyed having to explain it over and over to DH.