Sir, – I agree with Ann Marie Hourihane (Opinion, August 29th) that Dublin City Council could improve its education of the public about brown bin use, but she could also apply a bit of common sense of her own.
If she throws her kitchen waste unwrapped straight into the bin of course it will attract flies. The bio-degradable bags she has only recently discovered have been on sale in various supermarkets for at least two years. A 10-litre bag fits neatly into the small pedal bin we have in our kitchen. All our kitchen waste goes in there – I change the bag every three or four days and tie it up with cotton string. A few opened-out sheets of The Irish Timesmake a very useful wrapper for big items such as chicken carcasses.
This all goes into the brown bin, along with things like pizza boxes, dead flowers and fallen palm leaves, which take ages to decompose in an ordinary compost heap.
We’ve done this for two years and have never had a fly problem. The brown bin is emptied every two weeks, and it only costs €2 a lift. We now put much less into our black bin (lift cost €6), and consequently only need to put this out every four or sometimes six weeks.
It makes both economic and environmental sense. – Yours, etc,