Lots of Droppers have asked us about plastics bags and food scraps storage. So, here are the absolute bare essentials on bags for any droppers and committed composters.

The #1 preference is NO liner bag at all. If you can re-purpose a reusable container to store your food scraps, you require NO BAGs at all and can empty it each time directly into the Drop Spot totes. This helps us all REDUCE and REUSE and is the most back to basics way to store our food scraps. That said…

PAPER bags or NEWSPRINT are a totally acceptable option to use as a container liner. Both are naturally compostable, can be used to bag or wrap your food scraps and go directly into our food scraps collection totes. The beauty of this option is it allows you to re-use any old brown/kraft paper bags or newsprint you have at home and saves you money, while adding a little bit of lighter fill & fibre to balance out the nitrogen rich, wet food waste for composting.

If neither of these choices grabs your food scraps fancy, then you could use FULLY CERTIFIED COMPOSTABLE bags. (Bags labelled as degradable or biodegradable are not the same thing!) If you are choosing to use compostable liner bags, please make sure they are using bags OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED FOR COMPOSTING and have a BPI (Biodegradable Products Institute) certification written on the surface.

If the food scraps are dropped off in any other type of plastic bags, then the Drop Spot team will empty those bags and dispose them in the landfill pile. Unlike clean plastic bags, plastic bags that have food scrap bits stuck on them CANNOT be recycled.

So, in the end - To bag or not to bag? Well, the Drop Spot preference is for the latter, or paper as a close second!

Questions: My food scraps is attracting so many fruit flies. Is there any way to keep them under control?

The first thing to do to keep fruit flies from hovering over your food scrap container is to keep the container lid on tight. Beyond that, you can try to create ways to lure or a trap to counter any fruit flies problem. Here is a homemade recipe that works very well to keep fruit flies under control.

Homemade Fruit Flies Trap:

1. Get a small bowl or dish.
2. Combine 1 cup fruit juice + 2 drops vinegar for bait and 2 drops dish washing liquid soap into the bowl. (You can use other types of liquid as bait as well – some recipes use apple vinegar, red wine, etc.)
3. Put a layer of plastic wrap over the bowl (and secure it with a rubber band if necessary).
4. Poke some holes with a toothpick in the wrap to prevent fruit flies from escaping.
5. Placed fruit flies trap beside or on the lid of your food scraps container creates the perfect fruit fly trap.

Question: What do I do if I don’t have fridge space? How do I deal with bad smell?

The freezer or fridge is your best options for storing food scraps. But if you don’t have fridge space, you can still collect your food scraps and keep any smells at bay.

There are 2 key things to do to avoid smelly food scraps:

1) Drop it off regularly. If you drop off your food scraps on a weekly basis, the food scraps will not start producing any rotten smell.

2) Keep any cooked or raw meat, seafood, dairy food scraps in the fridge. These types of food scraps tends to be the culprit for bad odour because they go bad quickly without refrigeration. So you should definitely keep those separately in the fridge or freezer.

Other tips to keep the food scraps from smelling:

- Line your container with newspaper. (see tip #1) Also, put down a layer of newspaper on top of the food scraps in the container every few days. This will help keep older food scraps covered and separated.

- Rinse out your container after dumping its contents.

- Use a container with a lid and keep it tightly closed when you are using it.

- Put your food scraps in a cool/ shady spot – such as the under your sink.

- Try sprinkling in some baking soda into the food scraps.

- Make sure your food scraps bin is not soaking wet because moisture encourages decomposition. If there are wet food scraps (like cooked food scraps), wrap them in newspaper first before putting it the container.