Food Waste

[Stevek76]

[I only really mention this to illustrate differing waste collection systems around the country.

Yep, it's incredibly inconsistent. I'd rather do away with the collections altogether and have a continental style communal bin system in many places, I find it a little insane that we have streets of terraced houses where the pavements get cluttered up with bins for at least several days a week, sometimes permanently.

[Vorpal]

I was thinking of dough and pastry and similar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigs_in_a_blanket

Jonathan

What dough or pastry varies quite a bit from one part of the USA to another. Although there used to be (I don't know if there still is) a pre-made dough in a tube that you could cut up & wrap around sausages. But in the Upper Midwest, where I lived, people generally used a German style pastry dough, with only enough sugar in for the yeast to work, and extra salt, so the dough was salty & fairly heavy.


As for the original topic.... where I lived in the UK, we had food waste bins. I never used mine because I composted in the garden, but most of my neighbours put out food waste. In Norway, we have food waste bins. We use ours & it goes to become compost, which I can buy back for less than the cost of compost from the garden centre. I've been meaning to buy or build a compost bin, but haven't got round to it, yet.

[Pebble]

Beanz on toast for instance, isn't cooking.

hold on a minute, that's not right - it's my speciality dish.

I do grate some cheese on top of it too.

[Hellhound]

The bin I don't understand is the paid for garden waste bin. There's been some local paper aggro over that in Bristol as the driver shortage put the garden waste collections on hold for a bit. I can understand those with tiny gardens using the odd prepaid garden waste sack, but I don't get someone who does enough gardening to justify renting the full size green bins not just using a compost heap. They presumably must also go out and buy compost for their garden, paying twice for something they could've produced themselves for little effort.

We were offered one of these.£42 per annum IIRC.They are for people,like us,who aren't really gardening types and just have a lawn so don't need or use compost.
If we didn't already have 3 bins,Black-general,Brown-bottles/cans,Blue-paper/card I would have taken them up on their offer.

[Ben@Forest]

The bin I don't understand is the paid for garden waste bin. There's been some local paper aggro over that in Bristol as the driver shortage put the garden waste collections on hold for a bit. I can understand those with tiny gardens using the odd prepaid garden waste sack, but I don't get someone who does enough gardening to justify renting the full size green bins not just using a compost heap. They presumably must also go out and buy compost for their garden, paying twice for something they could've produced themselves for little effort.

We have one, and a large amount of our green waste is bulky woody/hedge trimmings, elder, buddleia and so on, most of which isn't ours, in the sense that the hedges either side of us are on neighbours' land. Over the course of a year we have to take a large amount of green waste to the tip too. If we were to compost it I reckon we'd need 20 large sized compost bins on the go. Where do we put them and how much compost are we supposed to use?

[thirdcrank]

Yep, it's incredibly inconsistent. I'd rather do away with the collections altogether and have a continental style communal bin system in many places, I find it a little insane that we have streets of terraced houses where the pavements get cluttered up with bins for at least several days a week, sometimes permanently.

I'm not familiar with continental style communal bin systems but IME in these parts, where separating waste got off to a terrible start, communal bins don't encourage people to sort their waste. I'm just back from our shopping trip which I combine with a visit to the bottle bank (we don't have a bottle collection and we are urged to take them to bottle bank) where there are also reception containers for charities and all manner of what is a form of fly-tipping occurs

[simonineaston]

My dad used to have regular bonfires, then he aquired an incinerator and boy did that thing get rid of garden waste or what ?! At full wack the thing used to get red-hot !!

[squeaker]

Having a separate food bin allows councils to collect the smelly stuff weekly (and therefore justify less frequent non recycling collections) and recycle it via composting rather than have it incinerated or sat in a landfill giving off methane.

IME the main driver now is a likely UK government requirement for councils to offer a weekly separated food waste collection to enable anaerobic digester use. (Not a lot of help in West Sussex as we have a materials recycling facility that already separates out the stuff that can go into a digester.) Nevertheless the extra bin collection service needs to be paid for - potential annual cost of £1m+ in Horsham District - hence efforts to minimise the cost impact by decreasing the frequency of 'rubbish' collection (but still offering a weekly 'hygiene products collection for those that need it)...

The bin I don't understand is the paid for garden waste bin. There's been some local paper aggro over that in Bristol as the driver shortage put the garden waste collections on hold for a bit. I can understand those with tiny gardens using the odd prepaid garden waste sack, but I don't get someone who does enough gardening to justify renting the full size green bins not just using a compost heap. They presumably must also go out and buy compost for their garden, paying twice for something they could've produced themselves for little effort.

Try living with the output of significant mature hedges - the trimmings really need to be shredded / chipped for any prospect of composting. Not everyone has the time / energy to do that, hence the garden waste bin. I do get annoyed when grass cuttings / weeds end up in them though!

[Mick F]

We have two big compost bins, but never use the compost. We've given much of it away.
These days, we just chuck out the peelings into the garden .......... but we have a big rural garden. The stuff either rots away, or something comes along and eats it.
Never seen a rat here in all our 26years at this address, so it's probably foxes or deer.
Too stony here, so not many worms, so never seen a hedgehog.

Hedgerows we shred in the electric shredder and the chippings get scattered back into the (now cut) hedgerows.
I'll be waiting until January before getting stuck into that task, as that's when the leaves have all gone and the weeds have finished.
I didn't do it last year, so the task is going to be monumental.

[661-Pete]

Does peelings and veg waste mixed among normal garden waste attract rats ? Have only started adding this to the compost this year, haven't seen any rats yet!

I'm not sure. The main thing that attracts our rats is the bird food. Oh yes - people have told us, don't feed the birds if you've got rats! A dilemma - we love watching the birds pecking away at the fat balls and stuff - even if it is mostly sparrows, starlings, and woodpigeons. And then of course Mr Rat turns up to feast on the leftovers dropped on the lawn.

As it happens, the metal post supporting our bird feeders presents no problem to Mr Rat. I've seen him scurrying up it as nimbly as if he were running across level ground...

As to compost bins - I don't think it's the peelings and stuff which attract them. It's the warmth. All composting generates heat. And so it's a nice cosy place to dig a burrow and crash out for the night - especially if there's a frost...

[Vorpal]

One advantage of letting the council do the composting... Industrial composters are temperature controlled, so they kill seeds and things, which a garden compost pile might not.

[[XAP]Bob]

As it happens, the metal post supporting our bird feeders presents no problem to Mr Rat. I've seen him scurrying up it as nimbly as if he were running across level ground...

[Jdsk]

Chatting to Mrs Mick F about this thread this morning after breakfast, and how I don't understand the expression "cooking from scratch".

The origin of "from scratch" isn't clear. The sporting meaning of "from a starting line scratched in the ground" is early, and might have come first.

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

Chatting to Mrs Mick F about this thread this morning after breakfast, and how I don't understand the expression "cooking from scratch".

Surely, it's cooking!

You can cook starting with basic ingredients or with processed ingredients. "From scratch" means the former.

Shirley

[[XAP]Bob]

No - to cook from scratch you first create a universe