How to use your brown bin to reduce greenhouse gases 

This new legislation will roll out steadily during the spring of 2024 as service suppliers present their new terms to customers. Contact yours to see what they have come up with, and any conditions and charges you need to key in as a brown-bin customer.

When we talk about brown bins, we’re not just talking about the food caddy (often a courtesy from bin suppliers) but a proper 120l food container for every rural and urban home. The European Commission is increasingly focused on the problem of food waste in the “farm-to-fork” cycle. 

Misplaced foodstuffs flung into the waste or recycling bin is a daily headache for our waste industry when processing the loads we create. Rural dwellers were not in the past offered a brown bin service automatically, in the mid-century belief that we had the room to compost or use the civic amenity site. The result? Tonnes of food waste lurking in black bins around the country.

I remember asking for a 120l brown bin when I realised it was free with my two-bin (recycling/waste bin) deal a few years ago. I’ll admit it has proved the most problematic of the three. If someone in the family is going to blithely cross-contaminate the bins, the mouth of the brown bin is the one that’s cheerfully bypassed. Confronted with cleaning off a plate or container and dividing up mixed rubbish, lazy family members can go rogue. 

Using the process correctly you should be able to redirect up to 30% of the biological waste going into your black bin to a brown bin. Let’s go through exactly what that handy new addition to 400,000 homes is for, and how to use it to best advantage.

First of all, the brown bin is the food bin, but it’s not just for foodstuffs. During certain periods of the year, it’s your green gardening bin too. It’s more properly termed a bio-waste bin. What can go in there? Raw and cooked meat and fish (cooked meats were generally not suited to composting), leftovers from meals, fruit and vegetable peelings, dirty paper napkins, paper towels without chemistry on them, pizza boxes, grass clippings and light garden waste. 

Warning. Don’t drop heavy rotten logs in there or your bin man will simply leave the whole bin on the kerb. Tea leaves and tea bags can go in there too but ensure tea pillows with stapled paper labels are segregated. Generally, if it grew, it could probably go in the brown bin once it’s stripped of all packaging, but avoid dumping large amounts of cooking oil.

If you decide you don’t want a brown bin, you will need to provide a written reason why and explain where your biodegradable food waste is going. For example, are you a keen composter or do you have a domestic bio-digester? Those living on off-shore islands are exempt from the legislation. Bin services will have a record of who is not on their brown bin list and can supply this to the local authority for review. 

Get that letter or email written if you don’t want one. Ireland’s strategy is to reach 60% recycling by 2030, and we’re not going to get there without everyone who can getting on board. In the UK, fines are appearing in certain localities for putting the wrong things in the wrong bin. I predict that unannounced audits by the environmental division of local town councils and authorities may well appear here in Ireland in the coming years.

Over the coming months, your bin service should offer at least one brown bin lift a month, and this should include the collection of garden waste from at least March to October. You may be supplied with a separate bin for this horticultural waste until October 31 (look into charges for this service). 

Where is this waste going? Well, presuming the bin is not contaminated with the wrong materials, this segregated material can be used for the creation of compost which can be used by local authorities to maintain our amenity areas. 

It can also be directed to anaerobic digestion for the creation of bio-gas, a crucial replacement (at least in part) for fossil fuels used in generating electricity.

One of the principal issues with the food bin is containing the natural smells it creates as food decays over two to four weeks. It’s often a very heavy load too, at around 1kg per litre of rubbish. Lining the bin can make a lot of difference. You can use newspaper to soak up liquid leaching from the load and even divide the waste into horizontal levels with newspaper as you fill the bin. 

Compostable liners made of plant starch (these must be certified to the European Standard EN13432 or by Cré, The Composting Authority of Ireland) can contain the whole load. Again, use them to divide up the load. Fruit and vegetable peelings wrapped in newspaper will attract fewer fruit flies.

Where you use any other plastics, on bin day, it’s your responsibility to empty the load back into the bin loose, as otherwise the plastic will spoil the bin. Do not empty the vacuum bag into the brown bin. It’s a horrible confection of carpet strains and petrochemical junk that goes into general waste. 

Before you put the bin out, take a breath, lift the lid, and check for any invasive materials from cardboard to light plastics in there and take them out with gloved hands. Holding your nose, you can be proud you’re playing your part.

• For more information on any question you have about what waste goes where see mywaste.ie