Office dustbins, designed to contain paper, are most often open.
Kitchen dustbins on the contrary are closed by a lid. That's
understandable since rotting meat and the like generate quite bad
smells. Even so those smells can spread out of the dustbin. Solutions
are to place the dustbin outside, dump bleach water in it... None of
these solutions is perfect.
The solution I use is to leave the dustbin always open. That way the
content can dry up. Dry food won't rot. It works perfectly almost
always. Apart from being a simple way to avoid bad smells this method
has many advantages: the dust bag becomes a little lighter, flies
aren't attracted and the garbage can burn at a higher temperature in
the city incinerator, contributing to generate less pollution. The only
task is to break apart big clumps of food thrown away. That way the
little pieces of wet food can
dry up faster, before they begin to rot. I also tend to let bones and
the like dry a few days in a little flat and open recipient aside of
the dustbin. Once the content of the recipient seems dry I throw the
whole inside the dustbin.
In order to improve further the idea I think of a few ideas:
A "dustbin ventilator". That would be a tube placed inside the
dustbin, constantly bringing fresh air to the bottom. The air flux has
to be very low in order not to blow germs out of the dustbin and keep
the electricity consumption and the noise negligible. Besides a strong
air debit won't make the dustbin content dry up quicker.
Porous dust bags. The bottom of the dust bag should be tight to
prevent liquids to spill. The upper parts can be pierced with little
holes to allow humidity to spread away. This is only valid if the
dustbin itself has open sides.
A porous dustbin lid. This would allow the humidity to flow away
yet keep the flies out. A porous lid would prevent free air movements
so it will slow down the drying therefore it should maybe be associated
with the dustbin ventilator.
Many combination are possible, like using a porous dust bag and a
completely tight and closed dustbin. Yet with a built-in ventilator at
the bottom of the dusbin that blows air between the inner side of the
dustbin and the outside of the dust bag. The air escapes through the
sides of the lid:
A simplified version would be to put the ventilator on the lid, with a
nozzle to direct a slow stream of air as deep as possible towards the
bottom before it rizes back towards the sides of the lid:
Further technological refinements can be to use a humidity detector,
use short and faster pulses of air...
