Big Bags

[PurpleDragon]

I have always used my supermarket carrier bags as bin liners (yeah, I know ) but now, inspired by the Carry-a-bag initiative, I don't get them anymore.

I have invested in a kitchen bin, but I now want to know what everyone else uses in theirs.

My food waste goes either to the chooks or the green cone. Paper and cardboard to the tip. Yadda yadda. The only things really that go in the kitchen bin are (nappy sack wrapped) nappies (no - I don't do the washable type); the plastic off pre-packaged foods; those horrid little tray things;

I could have sworn I had seen recyclable binbags, but when I checked, they were bags made *from* recycled plastic.

[Shirley]

Hiya

You can buy biodegradable bin bags but if they are going to landfill they may not biodegrade anyway.

I buy recycled plastic ones and try to limit as much as possible.

Plastic trays - you mean like from strawberries/mushrooms etc?? Some places will reuse those - the Green Grocer in Inverurie I think.... and they make great seed trays.

I'm trying to buy less and less packaged stuff... but it's not always easy.

[PurpleDragon]

Oh, well, at least I'm not the only one. Shirlz suggested newspaper in the bottom and carrying the kitchen bin to the wheelie bin. I'm strongly considering this option if I can't get something else sorted out. I've got to carry something up there anyway ... Only problem with that of course is the newspaper doesn't get recycled and I only buy one a week.

No - my trays are from supermarket prepackaged meat. I really need to source some other form of meat. I'm not impressed with our local butchers (even though one is always winning awards). I would rather get the same quality of meat for less money, you know? I grow my own strawberries and my mushrooms come in brown paper bags :)

I was expected a battle yesterday over carrots. I just put them loose on the conveyor belt, but she weighed them and handed them over unbagged. I think she saw all my "reduce reuse recycle" logos on the bags I brought with me and didn't dare

[ina]

I don't use anything in my kitchen bin - I think I've mentioned this before, this "obsession" with keeping bins spotless is very British... Once in a while the bin gets washed out. I usually just leave it out in a good rain! Don't understand people who have to doublewrap their waste (bin liner plus black bag, and then into the wheelie bin!), which is mainly fairly clean plastic anyway. Ok, I do understand why you would want to wrap nappies... Or cat tray contents.

And congratulations on getting your carrots unbagged! That's definitely progress. How often have I had to say several times over - no, I really don't want a bag for my two onions...

[PurpleDragon]

Oohhh I'm so tempted to just chuck stuff straight in. So what if it gets mucky? If it is emptied daily and then rinsed no one will get the lurgie!

Where I used to live we had a van come round monthly and give our wheelie bins a good scrubbing, but not up here. I must do that ....

[cir3ngirl]

Two weeks ago my boy and I counted 7 black bags out side a house. Yes it was a house and not flats. The boys were so cross.

Davina

[PurpleDragon]

Perhaps they'd had a party or something ...

Hm, I racking my brains trying to come up with something to give them the benefit of the doubt

[ina]

But why do wheelie bins need a scrub at all? I've never, ever seen anybody do that in Germany - and believe me, we didn't all die of waste fumes... And all our rubbish went straight in. Ok, we did do a lot more recycling than has been done here up to now, but as that is changing - compost etc becoming more popular - there really should be no need for cleaning the waste containers. You can always use all that superfluous packaging to wrap up meat waste that can't go into the compost.

[PurpleDragon]

I put meat waste into the green cone. Haven't had rats (yet!). Not in there, anyway.

I think that the wheelie bin thing was because we didn't do any recycling at all where we used to live. Everything went in. I think a wee squish round with some hot soapy water and a yard broom, once a year, would probably be all that was required now.

[Wombat]

We have two flip top bins in the kitchen - one for rubbish, one for compostables, and a bag behind the door fro recyclables. Both flip top bins have a plastic bucket inside which gets a rinse when emptied into the wheelie bin.

We don't rinse the wheelie bin - its a garbage bin...........

Nev

[Boots]

Well, we don't have the privilege of a wheelie bin!

Shopping is brought home in boxes. Scraps go to animals/compost. Paper is shredded for bedding/compost. Cardboard is used to line garden beds. Clothing is ragged or dropped off at an opshop.

All plastic used to be burned. Then a woman on another site made a heck of a lot of racket when I mentioned that. She insistedthat the 3 second melt down caused irrepairable damage to her air, and her ability to live, so I stopped this practice and began buying bin liners. It is now bagged (in plastic bin liners) and added to countless other piles of wrappers and non degradable items below the surface of the earth.

Still to this day, this practice does not add up to me, and I shudder at the thought of life below the earths surface and future generations attempting to live on land that is so deeply contaminated, but I have been unable to work out what is more environmentally disadvantageous.... land fill or reducing plastic with heat. Intuitively, I lean toward the reduction method as being better, but there was no support for this idea at all. Just left me feeling like some terrible air wrecker or something.

So I opted to heed the lamentations of a loony in West Aus and just do as I was so forcefully instructed.... There are so many things that we think are right, then find out are wrong a few years down the track. Tis not easy, is it?

[Chickpea]

You're right Boots. I think all you can do is the best you can according to the knowledge you have, and be open-minded so if in the future it is found that organic gardening actually does terrible damage to something or other then we can be prepared to change our deeply ingrained habits and beliefs.

When you look at what people in other generations have done we can cringe - when I was a kid we went everywhere in the car with all the windows up and both parents chain smoking, not only no child seats but no seatbelts in the car at all. And they were good loving parents and long-haired hippies to boot. But I can say without fear of being wrong that my kids will sneer at something I am doing now, I just don't know what. So I'm willing to cut my parents (and everyone from previous generations) some slack for things that seem so obviously wrong to me now, and try to teach my kids to be as tolerant so maybe they'll forgive me for whetever my unknown sins turn out to be.

[PurpleDragon]

Hi Wombat, sounds like a good system. We have a flip top bin that I've been using with a bag, a big box that gets the shredded paper - collected by the council, and a hessian bag that takes the cardboard. I havent quite progressed to tins and plastics yet, but that is coming within the month ...

[PurpleDragon]

Hiya Boots

Cardboard is used to line garden beds.

What does that involve, and why do you do it? I've never heard of that before.

[Boots]

HI PD,
The bulk of my gardens are raised beds, as I have pretty lousy soil here. Lotsof clay. The native grasses and lantana still manage to grow in it though. So I layer cardboard as a weed break before raising the beds and find it works well, and breaks down soon after starving the weeds of light.