Wave Good Bye to Plastic Dustbin Liners happily!! Welcome to Stackable Dustbins

"If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution" - Steve Jobs

All of us want solution, most of the time, quick and easy for every problem that we encounter in our life. We use plastic dustbin liners for easy and quick management of our waste bin and end up generating waste in the process, in-spite of having concern for environment.

Let us try to define our problem first...before finding the solution....

❌Problem:

We use plastic liners, to keep the dustbin clean without much efforts as otherwise the whole dustbin gets soiled with food waste and we don't want to spend time & energy to wash the BIG dustbin everyday

✅Solution:


🔀Fact check: 

• Average Wet Waste generation per day per household is less than 1kg  
• The dustbin we use for putting wet waste is almost 10-15 ltrs capacity, i.e. more than 10 times  the needed size.

Are you ready to go through an 'out of the box idea' of 'Stackable' Dustbins and see how changing dustbin size and develop new habits of usage will help to solve the plastic liners issue miraculously!! I have been doing this for past three years and I am sure it can be a very easy and effective method for many of us.This method is now followed by many people and are happy to do their bit for saving environment. (You will reduce minimum 365 plastic bags per year from your home.. Isn't it Great and Exciting!!)

              To get the idea exactly let us quickly visit our cooking habits 

Do you have a 12 litres-15 litres Pressure cooker at home for family of 4-6 members?

• We normally keep 2 to 4 pressure cookers at our homes for daily, occasional (a few guests), seasonal (special dishes during season like undhiyu..), guests and party ( Large Family/friends get-together etc..) needs

• Usually the sizes of the cookers vary from 1.5 ltrs to 8 ltrs depending on the family size and cooking requirements.

• We also try to use two different size cookers in combination to meet our cooking needs generally. We also use use same cooker twice for cooking bigger quantity.  

• We hardly think to buy one 12 ltrs or 15 ltrs cooker thinking about the extreme cooking requirement and use it daily!!  Why??  Because it is wastage of cooking time, cooking gas and efforts to clean it after use.

         We all do this OPTIMIZATION unknowingly and naturally. 

  How do we miss this basic fact for waste management? (May be because we never paid attention!!)

😐 we buy one big 10-15 litres capacity dustbin considering extreme needs ( as available in market)

😐 use it everyday for 365 days for putting wet waste be it 1 kg or 5 kg

😡 Use a big plastic dustbin liner to save on our cleaning efforts ( 🌳🐄🐟🐤🌱 even if we feel guilty will talk about environment later on 6th june  )

Are you ready to OPTIMIZE for managing waste in wet waste dustbins?   

• Select your Bins:  As you can see in the pic, I am using empty dabbas of Jaggery as wet waste bins. Different size 1kg, 2kg and 5kg  as and when needed in combination as stackable Dustbins. You can use any such broad mouthed steel/plastic dabba (so that its easy to put waste and clean later) as your wet waste bin. This way you need to wash only a small dabba daily as your wet waste bin along with other regular Bartans. 

• Analyse daily waste generation: Choose size depending on your daily waste generation volume and with trial and error you will get the perfect combination after regular use.  

• Analyse your weekly waste generation pattern: For eg. generally if you get veggies once/twice a week or you cut watermelon etc big fruit once a week your wet waste generation is more on those days. So you can use a bigger dabba of higher capacity. Or after first regular dabba is filled you can stack one more dabba of same or different size over it and use it for excess wet waste of the day. So this way you will use only required capacity of bins as per your need and save on washing efforts for bins. 

• If some day you are invited for a party and kitchen is on rest for a meal you can use 1kg dabba as bin { Keep on waiting for this day till CORONA .... allows us to party 😇}

A Few Useful Practical Tips on Easy Washing of Bins:

 As an alternative dustbin liner you may use 

• 🍀 A big leaf (You can get one while returning from morning walk)

• 🍟 Some food packaging paper/envelope/paper

• 🌸Leaf received at home as packaging of pooja flowers 

 If you are segregation enthusiast like me you can further segregate EXTREMELY WET WASTE and save on washing efforts.

• Chai patti, leftover food, veg n fruit peels, kitchen sink filter remains.. etc.. which is physically too watery 💦💧and wet and generally low volume into one small bin. This way you will save on bin washing efforts.  

• Put other wet waste like matar ka chilka,  palak dhania etc haari bhaji remains, corn peels, corn cobs, groundnut chilka, chawli peels, onion peels (which are not physically wet and generally which is given to Gaay-bakri in villages for food and usually higher volume) into another big bin/ bag. This bin/bag only needs occasional rinsing to keep it clean. No need to scrub and wash 👍

You can also come up with another tailor-made solution for your needs like this. This Stackable Dustbins method has served for me as a magic bin in many ways to be a part of sustainable solutions, improve lifestyle, increase savings, reduce wastage of food, reduce plastic waste. There are ideas of cleaner job creation at local level. A few true stories of giving up plastic liners. All these will be shared in blogs to come....

A special thanks to Ramanilatha for helping me to initiate blogging and all my family members, well-wishers and Parivartan 360 degree members for support with my experiments with waste always...