How do we throw away our garbage if we stop using plastic bags?

Question

I want to stop using plastic shopping bags but how will i throw out rubbish? paper bags rip with fruit -vegetables, they are not available, and there is no composting in my country.

Answer 1

You may not stop but reduce your waste with worms.  Have you looked into Vermacasting?  You are using worms to eat your garbage and turn it into natural organic fertilizer for your indoor or outdoor plants.  

You should consider starting a composting pile for your vegetable  garden. Then you can use a plastic bucket to take your wet garbage to the compost pile.  With the right mixture of waste, it can be very educational  and learning experience.

Answer 2

get biodegradable bags

Answer 3

Well, idealy, you can have no rubbish. Don't buy packaged foods, and just buy fresh veggies and fruits. Stay away from the processed c**p, and go back to regular living. And you'll still have to probably have to buy some packaged stuff, just try to limit your trash to one trash bag every 2 weeks or so. Good luck!

Answer 4

I think this is a great question, and you have recieved some really excelent answers.

I'll only add that I reuse the plastic type (or paper) bags I cannot avoid purchasing.  We live on a permaculture farm, and raise most of our own food, as well as food for our dogs and livestock.  Still, there is food I purchase.

We have 8 working farm dogs (!!).  Even though they are fed a partial raw diet, they still recieve kibble.  The kibble now comes in extremely strong plastic bags.  We use those a lot.

Our rabbit feed comes in the same strong plastic type bags.

Special food for my senior horse comes in four layer paper sacks (50 pound bags of feed).

Even though we don't use a lot of outside feed, we still produce more than enough sacks to fill our needs for garbage sacks.

In good portion that is true, because we produce so little in the way of garbage.

Since most of the thing we purchase (that we do not produce ourselves) comes in 50 pound paper sacks (like our white flour, pearl barley, oatmeal, ect) we always have a few sacks either from animals, our own own food needs that are empty.

We have a cardboard box sitting on top one of the fridges.  We just fold the bags up as they empy, and put them in the box, then grab them for use as needed.

If you buy in bulk, and cook from scratch, you'll find you don't have much waste.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

Answer 5

Now this will take you back in history, to the days when few people had TV and everyone bought newspapers every day for their news and entertainment (think pre 1950s roughly).

There were also very few supermarkets and almost no prepared packaged foods, so the weekly shopping was some 5 to 8 lbs lighter than now (that is now all packaging).

To start cooking, you'd spread a triple layer of yesterday's Qewspaper on the kitchen table (oh, there were also few benches, usually stove sink fridge (or ice box!!) were free standing, with one separate pantry cupboard).....then you'd put the cutting board on top, chop everything for your meal, then wrap all the garbage in the newspapers. The glossy free local advertising papers are ok, they are more waterproof.

Many places people also had a few chickens, they'd get some of the greens (today most urban communities ban chickens even from large yards, because neighbours object to them crowing or cackling in the morning).

The paper wrapped garbage would go into a tin garbage bin with a not-too-well fitting lid. They would NOT smell nice in summer. Sometimes the area near the bin would grow self-sown tomato bushes or cantaloupes from seeds fallen from the bin. This is not a good arrangement in apartment buildings.

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as far as I know the moves are for banning plastic SHOPPING bags, but not the bin liner ones.....so you'd not be given free bags but have to pay for some others if you want them.

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I put my "green" fabric bags near our car key tray when I empty them ,so we remember to put them back in the car, so we have them for the next shopping. The few bags we collect  on last-minute unplanned shopping are enough for bin liners. If we still build up an excess, I donate them to a nearby charity shop, which always needs packaging for their customers...at least they get used 2 or 3 times this way. Some raw vegetable matter we chop fine and make compost with, even though our garden is only a terrace of pot plants. We have paper and bottle (glass and plastic) collection, so these we keep separate. A lot of packaging paper and food boxes can go in this, too, even pizza boxes if they are food-free.

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We also save water by rinsing plates and washing fruit etc over a basin in the sink. This is enough for watering our pot garden.

Answer 6

Let them dry up a bit and use a plastic or metal bin which you can carry to the curbside container. Assume the paper bag will tear open, so use it as a liner to keep the bin clean, not as a means of transporting wet garbage.