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Wheelie bin

People treat it as a cleaning problem; the collection authority answers it as a waste-handling one. The cleaning instruction is real and it is one line of a much longer answer.

Precautions

  • Wear gloves
  • Do not apply to a hot surface
  • Dispose of responsibly

Start here

What this is, what tends to go wrong with it, and what to do about it.

What tends to go wrong

In detail

A smelly bin with larvae in it is the problem people describe, and the waste authority's answer starts somewhere else: flies lay their eggs directly on waste food, so maggots mean flies reached food IN THE BIN — or in the kitchen, before the bag went out. That makes most of the answer containment rather than cleaning. Never leave food, including pet food, uncovered. Double-bag food waste in securely tied bags, wrapping meat, fish and dairy in newspaper first. Squeeze the air out of the bag before tying it. Keep the lid shut, and recycle enough that it CAN shut. Keep the bin in shade rather than in sun. The cleaning line sits inside that list: keep the inside and the outside clean with a disinfectant and remove food spills. For a bin that already has maggots, the sequence is the part that gets done backwards. Most of them leave with the collection. Boiling water and ordinary cleaning products kill the rest. And the bin is washed out AFTER it has been emptied — washing a full one accomplishes very little.

Sources for this page

Sources

  1. Maggots in your wheelie bin — advice on prevention

    Fareham Borough Council · Government or regulator

    Relied on for: That maggots indicate flies reached food in the bin or in the kitchen, that prevention is double-bagging, excluding air, closing the lid and storing the bin in shade, that inside and outside are kept clean with a disinfectant, that boiling water and readily available cleaning products kill maggots and fly eggs, and that the bin is washed out after it has been emptied. (states this directly)

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