So I have a backyard small scale operation that use 27 gallon totes to collect food waste for. Sometimes the totes will have raw meat, cooked food, bakery….mostly discarded produce from the local grocery stores. Anyways, with my wife going back to work and having all these kids, I can’t always get to my totes on time so I may have some food develop a sticch before I can empty them and rinse them out. Well, my wife would like to help sometimes but she doesn’t want to help if she can’t bleach the totes out because it’s “unsanitary” which I agree, but I figured bleaching the totes would likely transfer onto some of the food and have negative impacts on microbial activity on the food in the pile. Should I bleach the totes or no?
by BonusAgreeable5752
10 Comments
So long as you properly wash the surfaces off you should be fine. Bleach is at the end of the day, a cleaner, and if you’re appropriately rinsing a surface or doesn’t leave any residual impact. That being said, good soap and a hose also works and you’re not using bleach.
You’ll be fine as long as you don’t dump the bleach directly into your pile. Bleach quickly breaks down into safe components very quickly too. You can even treat your drinking water with it.
Just rinse out the totes with water afterwards, or wait like 24 hours, and you’ll be totally fine.
So – cleansers will need proper disposal … like down the drain.
Quick pressure wash — dump that water into your compost.
Then use UV to sterilize (hint: 🌞)
Your wife is gonna learn real quick that bleach won’t do a damn thing to clear out a lot of the stuck-on gunk, and its a beast to work with. Gets all over you no matter how hard you try. She would have to scrub the totes and in that case shes better off using dish soap.
If she insists on bleaching your tubs, then she just needs to rinse them well afterward. Bleach isnt really all that environmentally hazardous aside from adding chlorides to the soil. Bleach also hates being bleach and easily evaporates or reacts to become less oxidizing byproducts.
Just rinse them out after bleaching and it will be fine. After rinsing most of the bleach will be gone, and worst case hou might kill a small amount of bacteria on the outside of material in the container, but won’t be significant or prevent that matter quickly getting recolonised.
Like definitely don’t go using the containers unrinsed, or pouring bleach directly on the pile, but any trace amounts left will be decayed away in the composting process.
edit to add: seeing healthy pineapple crowns on a pile makes me sad though, they’re so easy to regrow!
Get some black Soldierfly larvae!
It’s fine. Rinse and dry. The bleach goes away.
The amount of bleach necessary is so very small. Lots of people use far too much.
It evaporates easily. Used in the food service industry for sanitizing pots and dishes. Works fine with ferments. Just be sure to rinse and let air dry.
Be careful with collateral damage. I’ve ruined many an outfit. It is also hell on metal parts and can embrittle plastic as well.
Pressure wash and bleach? Or stop at a car wash and use theirs?
Bleach will evaporate pretty fast when it’s warm/dry so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Nice piles btw lol