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Green Bin Waste
Are you aware you can put scraps of food in your green bin and reduce the waste sent to the landfill? Are you also aware you can reduce carbon emissions and return essential nutrients, through compost, back into the environment?
You need to know the types of food items to put in the green bin. This way, you will be maintaining the quality of your green bin. Apart from the regular compostable items such as vegetable and fruit scraps and grains, there are five sets of things to get rid of in the green bin Adelaide. This is what this article entails.
Items Allowed In The Green Bin
Meats, Bones, and Seafood Scraps
You probably may not include these food items in the compost at your home, but feel free to place any type of seafood, meat, bones, and all other related scraps in the green bin.
Dairy and Poultry Products
You are free to put products including eggshells and cheese, into the green bin. Remember that these scraps should be loose and with no wrapping either by plastic, paper, or glass.
Leftover Food
While you try your best to minimise food waste, sometimes it is unavoidable. Whenever you have leftovers, either fresh, processed, or pantry foods that have expired, you can place them inside the green bin. Also, remember to get rid of any packaging before you throw the items into the bin.
Coffee Grinds and Loose Leaf Tea
If you love hot caffeine or a cuppa, you can place your coffee grinds and loose-leaf tea into the green bin. However, coffee pods and tea bags are unacceptable, and you will need to place them inside your red bin.
Compostable Liners
You can easily take the food scraps from your kitchen to the green bin at your home by wrapping them inside compostable liners. Compostable bags should display certification and the seedling logo. Avoid using plastic or any other uncertified type of compostable bags because they contaminate the process of composting and undo the good work you have already done.
Alternative items that can go in your green organics bin include the following:
• Ash
• Food containers made of cardboard or bamboo
• Bin liners that are compostable (approved by local council)
• All food scraps
• Dead plants and flowers
• Garden trimmings
• Grains (e.g., bread, pasta, rice, noodles)
• Grass clippings
• Hair
• Dirty kitchen towel
• Leaves
• Manure (from all animals)
• Paper (wet and dirty)
• Paper towels
• Dirty pizza boxes
• Serviettes
• Shredded paper
• Soil (only small amounts)
• Twigs and sticks
• Teabags
• Tissues
• Untreated timber (without paint, fittings, or nails)
• Weeds
What Cannot Go In Your Green Bin Adelaide?
By now, you already know what needs to go into the bin. However, there are things you are not allowed to dispose of into these bins. These include:
• Treated timber
• Plant pots or plastic bags
Tips To Minimise Smells In Green Bins
Green bins minimise the hard waste going into landfills. However, they may reek at some point due to improper use or maintenance. Most solutions to this problem focus on what causes the odours, including bacteria, humidity, decomposition, and disposal of a lot of meat. Bacteria grow well in humid conditions, and they therefore multiply. They cause bad smells to arise out of your green bin.
If you are facing this nose-wrenching challenge, the best way forward is to deal with what makes these bacterial goobers very comfy. Eliminate stuffy and hot conditions. You can get rid of these smells in straightforward ways. They include:
Airing Out the Bin
By the time you empty the bin, keep the lid off till the time you’ll need to make use of it (replace the lid if it starts raining). After airing and putting garbage back in, you should close the lid. During collection day, the green bin will most likely be out in the sun. During the other times, you should get a better spot for the bin.
Choose a shady area that stays cool, preferably for the longest part of the day. This slows down the rate of decomposition of organic waste. The bacteria also become more sluggish during these conditions. To ensure your waste bin smells better, it may be helpful if you keep the lid open. The smells will leave the container freely. The bin is, however, not protected from the rain.
Keeping Your Bin Clean
Giving the green bin a thorough once-over is an excellent strategy to get rid of a bad smell. Make it your habit to rinse the green bin on the collection day after emptying. Spray it properly inside and out using your garden hose. For better results, use the most appropriate pressure washers at your disposal.
Rinse the bin with soapy water and make use of a dishwashing liquid. If it’s possible, try out a biodegradable dishwashing liquid because most people leave the water to drain onto the ground directly.
Use vinegar to rinse the bin and ensure you soak your sponge in vinegar to save on expenses, and then give the sides of your bin a thorough wiping. A window-cleaning tool with a telescopic handle can also make your work easier. After washing your green bin, ensure you keep your lid open and that the inside dries completely before closing or using it.
Newspaper Lining
After emptying the green organics bin, place a single sheet of paper at the bottom of your bin before putting any waste inside. This prevents food waste from getting stuck at the bin's bottom.
Layering Garden Clippings
Layer the garden clippings with the food waste. Your garden clippings will form the layer at the bottom of the bin before putting food waste. It will help to break up emerging fumes and prevent the bin from smelling.
Placing in the Shade
You can place your bin out of direct sunlight to help stop the growth of bacteria. Once there are no bacteria in the bin, you will prevent the production of foul bin smells. Therefore, if you own three or four bins in line, your organics bin should spend a lot of time under the shade.
Allocating Space in the Freezer
If odours from food items, especially seafood scraps, worry you, ensure you wrap them in a newspaper and keep them safe in a freezer till the time you will have your bin collected.
The green bin you own is serviced weekly, along with both the red and yellow bins in your possession, so you have no reason to worry about the scraps attracting pests once they start smelling.
Ensuring the Contents are Dry
Bacteria thrive in humid environments. It is, therefore, crucial to ensure the green bin is dry and cool at all times. However, the only challenging fact about biodegradable and organic waste is that they are never dry. The teabags, squishy meat, and decomposing peels in the bin will also get mushy after some time. However, some tips can help you reduce the level of wetness of the waste in your green bin. They include:
• Ensuring that you squeeze off all the liquid in the tea bags before throwing them into the bin. Juice from the tea bag can easily get stuffy and smell in any garbage bin.
• Make use of moisture-absorbing materials arranged in layers. These materials include old bread and newspapers. The old bread and newspaper will absorb the excess moisture emerging from the food scraps.
• You may also thoroughly wrap a wet piece of food using several newspaper layers before placing them into the bin.
Never Skipping the Collection Days
It is better to ensure you get rid of the organic waste faster. It doesn’t matter whether the bin is full or not. Don’t keep the waste bin for weeks waiting to fill it because the trash will end up rotting and stinking throughout the entire waiting period.
Getting rid of these small amounts of waste and cleaning the bin thoroughly afterwards are probably the two most important tips for preventing odours.
Applying Odour-Fighting Products
When you visit the store to buy deodorant, ensure it is organic. There are different home remedies to try out, and in case you already have them in your home, you will not have to spend on anything. Baking soda is effective when you want to kill odours. It is also affordable, and you can always have it as part of your pantry.
When using it, sprinkle the bottom of the dry, empty bin with a layer of baking soda. You should also add some light soda layer any time you add scraps into the bin. If there are a few rotten lemons in your kitchen caddy, you can also stick them into the bin. Lemons will not get rid of smells or finish off bacteria, but they will mask the odours with their lemony tang.
Essential Benefits Of Recycling Waste
Waste recycling is crucial for conserving the environment, and the small steps can bring a significant difference in the world. If we are concerned about preserving nature and the available resources, it’s essential to make waste recycling a part of us. Today, landfills are identified as an environmental issue that requires a lot of effort to solve.
The problem gets bigger every day, as people throw more waste in landfills. As such, non-biodegradable waste materials such as plastic tend to remain in landfills for hundreds of years, releasing gases that threaten the environment. You can significantly minimise the number of waste materials dumped in landfills by applying sustainable waste recycling techniques. By recycling commercial and domestic waste, everyone can contribute towards saving the environment in the following ways:
Resource Preservation
According to research, approximately ninety-four per cent of resources are not renewable among every natural resource that citizens use. The total volume of resources like mineral ores and fossil fuels is limited. If humans fail to control the extraction rate and use of critical natural resources, the overall stock can be exhausted very soon.
When we get rid of used metals and plastic in landfills, we lose them forever. It is therefore crucial that we save them for generations to come. The only appropriate way the community can regenerate a large amount of rejected resources is by recycling.
Habitat Conservation
About forty per cent of the timber in the world is used for making paper pulps. As a result, the paper industry has led to more forest destruction than palm oil farming or mining in tropical regions. The more our forests keep on degrading, the more the existing fauna lose their habitat.
Aside from deforestation, forest destruction also occurs because of the processes involved in infrastructure development and other projects like mining. Waste paper recycling is among the best ways to reduce or get rid of deforestation worldwide. We can preserve millions of natural trees every year if citizens recycle even a tenth of the newspapers.
Minimal Energy Consumption
People consume high energy levels during raw material mining, transportation, and processing, yet they can save a large portion of their consumption by recycling and segregating paper, plastic, and metals. For instance, compared to glass manufacture from scratch, you can recycle and use only about fifteen per cent of energy.
Pollution Control
Recycling addresses the issue of pollution because it reduces the need to manufacture new products using new materials. It also reduces landfills and littering, thus helping us avoid incineration. Contaminants like brine, dust, metals, and radionuclides in landfills pollute water and land by leaching out. Recycling helps manage these sources of pollution.
Global Warming Reduction
Nearly forty-two per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitted in many countries result from processing, production, transportation, and disposal of various materials. According to research experts, human beings can control global warming to some extent by reducing waste materials in the environment.
At this point, recycling waste helps the cause, and this cannot be possible unless people use the green bins effectively.
Using Curbside Bins As An Alternative
Similar to green bins and FOGO bins, curbside bins help households with their trash, rubbish, and waste disposal. The local council provides wheelie bins placed on the curbside, and once they are filled with designated waste, they empty the bins into rubbish trucks.
The waste collected by these rubbish trucks either move to a recycling plant or a landfill, depending on which type it is. Apart from maintaining general health, curbside bin collection greatly protects the environment. Previously, people used to dispose of waste in landfills.
By then, people had not adopted the concept of recovering resources. But today, we have different ways to handle the waste. The introduction of curbside bins has played a significant role in collecting waste to convert it into energy.
Hire A Green Bin In Adelaide
To make it simple, hiring a green bin can be an appropriate green waste disposal option. You can have peace of mind by contacting the business you wish to get your skip from and checking their stance on waste removal. A clean environment will always guarantee you a healthy living standard.
Supreme Skips
Supreme Skips have the largest range of skip bins available for hire in the Adelaide, SA region.
