Whole freezer contents spoiled, how to dispose?

Ignore - found their complaints form :)

When our freezer packed up, I gave the contents away, as it had defrosted but not yet spoiled.

When I left the door open on ours overnight, I chucked out the molten homemade ice lollies which had been wrapped in paper and closed the door. No-one noticed or died.

The thermostat on ours had gone, and it took a week to get the replacement. So, we couldn't just refreeze everything.

Anyway, we made some people happy!

Don't hold your breath. In the first half of September our cardboard/paper recycling bin was not collected "due to having tissue paper in it". The ban on tissue paper is purely due to infection risk and there was clearly no risk, as these were simply the last couple of sheets that were still glued to empty toilet roll tubes.

There is no contact other than online with the waste collection company and (as their FAQ stated would happen) any complaint was summararily rejected automatically, as the bin had been tagged.

I spoke to someone at the council, who agreed that the bin should not have been tagged at all for the end of toilet rolls and advised me to raise an official complaint - I am still waiting for a reply.

Other complaints that I have raised (well, the same one twice) are about them turning the local football pitches through 90°, so every missed shot at goal comes straight out onto the main road! The second complaint was prompted when a ball had already crossed the road onto land on the other side before I arrived and I had to do an emergency stop when a player, carrying the ball, ran out from behind a tree, right in front of me. Again, I have received no reply to either of those complaints.

I would have wired out the dud thermostat and plugged the freezer into a

PA

It's great, in'it.

Society is going to hell in a handcart and the AI thing has not even started on us. Harrow have answered (well, the webmaster), no collection possible other than in their prescribed bins.

I have to drive the whole festering lot in the back of the car, in bio-degradable bags after me removing plastic wrappings and throwing up several times no doubt - then take the car to a valet company to get rid of the smell.... yeah, it's well gone past state of edible.

Years ago they sent out 7L bins specifically for food, but now are enforcing their use, so they can apparently burn the scraps to produce power. Because some transient people round here are confused and upset by the separation rules, I'm suddenly seeing random black bin bags dumped into my bin.

In other news, Council workers wonder why fly-tipping is on the increase.

Are you overthinking this? There appears to be a 'general waste bin':

The council won't take it outside the normal waste stream (the small caddy and your existing bins), so if it won't fit in the caddy then the fallback is the 'general waste' bin.

After all, you can argue it's not sanitary to dispose of it another way, similar to dog poo.

Yes it'll go to landfill and won't get composted (apart from in the landfill), but your quantity is small in the grand scheme of things - it's not like you do this every week. Compared to the volume of green waste generated by mowing a lawn, it's insignificant.

Theo

I had thought that - but perhaps the OP's bin collectors check bin contents, and if they found food waste they'd refuse to take it? I know our lot have done that with me when I've put the odd bit of green waste in my black bin.

In E&W at least they cannot refuse to take ordinary food waste. Separate collection of it is not compulsory. Garden waste is different.

Come to think of it, so are dead pets so might be scope for argument if the freezer held a lot of guinea pigs.

If you want to dispose of anything, where they might object if the spot it - just put it in the wheelie bin first, at the bottom, so it is well buried under the legitamate contents. They only ever look at what's in the top of the bin.

I quickly worked out that the value of the contents was far lower than the cost of an emergency 24-hour call-out so I gave the meat etc to my neighbours and stayed up all night cooking, bottling and otherwise preserving the fruit and veg.

Nick

Haha. I ran my fridge like that for a year. I adjusted the on/off duty cycle to get the temperature correct.

Brian

Yes. I'm running our larder fridge on a 8:00 to 10:30 morning and evening cycle. I'll get around to refurbing the thermostat when I've time to spare.

Real d-i-y ;>}

PA

You could have bypassed the stat with a short length of cable, and to avoid running the motor 24/7 use one of those plug in 24 hour timers (*).

(*) The Smiths electronic version is better because I assume it has the logic to switch on/off at the wave form crossing point when the volts are zero.

I've yet to find how to do the equivalent if it uses an NTC thermistor and a control board. Not inclined to strip it to play while still under warranty.

When our freezer failed, it failed "on": the motor was running continuously because the contents were never getting down to the temperature that turned the thermostat off.

I first noticed it because we have an energy-monitoring smart plug on the freezer in the garage (*) and I was checking the graph to make sure there was the normal pattern of on and off cycles during the day - easier than going out to the garage with a thermometer. And I noticed an abnormal pattern.

That was a broken weld in the coolant pipe, so the coolant had all leaked out. Still under warranty so the freezer was replaced free of charge. Took ages to get the company to come out to investigate, and the first guy diagnosed a circuit board failure and ordered that, and when another guy came to fit it, he said "No, it's a broken pipe - can't do anything about it other than order you a replacement freezer and someone (different) to collect the broken one." I did ask the first guy "Could it be a loss of coolant and he assured me that it wasn't..."

The problem with some modern freezers is that the digital display only shows the desired temperature, and not the actual temperature, so you can't look at the display to see from outside whether the temp is getting too high. And sod's law: the temp never got so warm that it triggered the alarm on the freezer.

(*) Yes, it was a Beko freezer which is rated down to a few degrees below zero - not one of these stupid freezers where you have to keep the room warm in order for the freezer to get sufficiently cold.