Compostable 'plastic' bags.

Local Authority in my neck of the woods, operates a Brown Bin, (compostable waste) collection. Garden waste can be put in raw. Food/kitchen waste must be bagged in compostable bags, which they supply free of charge.

It's a good idea in principle.

However, the bags really are well on their way to decomposing before you get to use them. You are lucky if you can tear one off the roll, without it shredding. Odds are that whatever you put in will drop straight through, taking the bottom out of the bag, and create yuk all over t kitchen floor.

Maybe, thought I, they are sitting around too long, and I am not getting through them at the rate intended.

So I used one or two to put kitchen waste into my own compost tumbler: they survived a whole year of tumbling with the compost, and then ANOTHER whole year of being buried in the garden soil. Still they have not decayed. Seems they only decay in your kitchen drawer, and stabilise once disposed of. Bizarre or what?

They used to do the compostable bags in Wigan.

I hope they worked better than these.

Used all my free ones supplied by the council, now put all my kitchen waste straight into the caddy provided. Know what you mean about the compostable bags. Useless.

Our Council stopped collecting food waste.

They moaned at one point about us putting compostable food waste such as peelings etc. Into the green bin.

Now they tell us we should do it.

Just the same thing here Lapis. Councils should make their mind up.

I have had no problems with the bags and I get mine from Marsh Green library.

I can foresee ours stopping too.

Think most hereabouts have given up on the compostable bags, and use brown bins purely for garden waste. Many seem to have reverted to disposing of food waste in black bag that goes into black bin, which goes to landfill.

Sort of defeats the object, really.

Can't help but think someone, somewhere has made a perverse decision which has prevented fine tuning the characteristics of the material from which the bags are manufactured.

And, for a hapeth of tar, the ship whur lost....

I used to wrap any food waste in newspaper. But as I'm against food waste I have very little.

We don't have much food waste either. Waste not want not.

My neighbour puts it out for the rats. She thinks she is feeding the birds!

Doesn't take much to attract rats. I've seen them in town early on a Sunday morning when revellers the night before have discarded the leftovers from whatever food outlet they bought from.

Peelings, bones and discards seem to accumulate from consuming fresh food, no matter how frugal I attempt to be. I have scant packaging waste though as I rarely buy any preped food, and do not have a freezer, so nowt frozen.

Marken we are the same no trouble with the bags and can pick them up from Ashton library or the Post office in Old RoadThere are 30 bags in a roll so these should last between 8-10weeksOnce i have started on a roll then i then try to go within a few weeks and pick another roll up from the libraryIf you have too many bags and don't use them frequently then they start sweating and degrade

We have no trouble with the bags, We get them from Standish Library.

The bags are fine for a long time, but they get to a point where they start to disintegrate. I used them all last Summer in our caravan and they were fine, but we left them in at the end of the caravan season last October, and when we started the new season this year, I found they were tearing as I tried to separate them. We got some new ones and they have been fine.

No trouble with the bags from the Life Centre in Wigan.

We have a garburator in the sink and all the peelings and surplus food go down that. Gets broke up and flushed away into the water pipes.

France have just voted to ban the plastic cup, it's a massive step forward. States of America are bsnning the same by the week, Hope the UK decides to follow suit very soon. Cost wise, it costs a 5th to recycle than to start from raw product.

We have to pay a 5c minimum deposit on every bottle, tin can or Tetra Pak. Larger bottles cost more. However we save them and take them back to the bottle depot's and get our cash back. This saves millions being sent to the dumps. The bottle stores send them away to be recycled.

We should have thought of that years ago, Broady.

No reason to make a special trip into town for them though.

There are two bottle depots within ten minutes of my home. You take them back to roughly the same area you bought them from when you go shopping. No special trip needed.

No problem with our bags either. We get ours from Kitt Green Post Office.

I meant for us to collect the compost bags, broady.

My misreading.

we sometimes have to get dbl bags if we are walking sometimes we forget and the bags rip

Food packaging should be compostable, especially the fast food containers.

Back in the day when most of it was paper, it was.