Cleaning your wheelie bin

The wheelie bin is one of those first world problems. On the one hand we have our rubbish collected from our property and we never think of it again. Hoorah for Council Tax and all it pays for! But as residents of this over-privileged Western society our waste is such a huge problem that we have filled up all the available holes in the ground and need to start doing something other than packing it indiscriminately into black plastic bags and considering it to be someone else’s problem.

Enter the green wheelie bin. I remember wheelie bins being introduced in 1986 or 1987. Old people hated them on principle. There were stories of grannies falling in trying to clean them and not getting out. We used to have the old fashioned aluminium dustbins like this:

The one in the picture is nice and shiny. Unfortunately real dustbins didn’t stay like that. They became battered and dull and the lid never quite fitted. The dustmen would take the lid off, hoist the bin onto their shoulder and shake the contents into the dustcart. So you can see how the wheelie bin was an improvement.

A wheelie bin is nice and light and easy to move and there was much less mess because the dustmen didn’t have to lift and shake the bins any more, they just rolled the wheelie bin on to the lift and the dustcart did the heavy lifting. So everything was rosy for a few years.

Then the green wheelie bins arrived. I won’t post a picture because they are just the same except green. You put compostable things in your green bin. The bins are collected on alternate weeks, which meant that if your bin lived in direct sunshine it would get pretty smelly, but most people settled down and managed it. We were a greener nation as a result. Well, we were a greener District anyhow. Bins are run by the District Council. It’s why we keep them.

Then the blue wheelie bins arrived. You could now put plastic, glass, tins, paper and cardboard in the bin and they would be recycled. Hurrah! again for eco-friendliness. We’ve found a way to recycle and reclaim which is economically viable.

The issue starts with the cardboard and paper. There always used to be a layer of these at the bottom of the green bin. This made it so that the contents of the green bin would all fall out into the dustcart with very little left inside. Now the cardboard is in the blue bin and the remaining compostable waste gets a bit damp and sticky.  I can tell you now that leaving it in the bottom of the bin and hoping it will biodegrade enough to fall out into the dustcart next time is foolish. Not quite as foolish as doing this fortnight after fortnight until the smell is unbearable of course, but you wouldn’t do that. Here is my advice for dealing with a really disgusting green bin for short wimpy people.

Scrape the really nasty stuff out of the bottom of the bin before you start. Put it in the black bin, but make sure that it doesn’t land straight on the bottom or you will be doing this next weekend with the black bin. Don’t forget to wash the spade you have to use because your arms are short.

Get a pressure washer. If you have a pressure washer look after it so when you get it out the shed after five years expecting to use it to clean the disgusting bin it actually works.

If the garden hose doesn’t have enough oomph to knock the dirt from the bottom of the bin you need to scrub it off. Use throwaway tools. Cheap dish brush with a long handle is perfect. In fact throwaway clothes are perfect because you’re going to have to put most of you inside that bin to reach the bottom.

If the smell is really bad you can use bleach. Put some bleach in the bottom of the bin and start filling with water. Use thin bleach so it mixes up nicely. The thick coloured stuff isn’t so good.

When filling the bin with water use only a little bit. Don’t fill the bin halfway and realise that although the wheelie bin is light water is a kilo a litre and you now have a bin with 80 litres of water which weighs 80 kilos.

When filling your bin with 80 litres of bleach and water make sure you are near a drain so you can tip the water straight into the sewage system. Don’t put your bin on the lawn which is down a step from the nearest drain. The grass  prevents rolling the bin anyway.

If your bin is now too heavy for you to move I recommend using a watering can to decant some of the water. It’s much easier to carry across the garden and pour carefully down the drain, avoiding all the precious plants.

Disposable rubber gloves are totally recommended here. The water will have nasty little floaty things in from that bottom sludge. Try to avoid getting them in the watering can.

When you have emptied enough water so you can now move the bin remember to drag it somewhere that bleach water can do no hard. Don’t pour it on the lawn (no, I didn’t do that).

When you have emptied the bin and rinsed off the bleach-water you can use fresh water and scrub the dirt off. Then leave to dry in the sunshine tra-la-la.

Then go to http://www.yell.com and look for bin cleaners. For a small fee you can avoid this horrible, awful, stinky process.