You can clean a wheelie bin yourself. Plenty of people do. It helps to know what a proper clean involves before you decide.
Doing it yourself
To clean a bin properly at home you need to:
- Wait until the bin has been emptied.
- Tip it on its side or reach to the very bottom with a long brush.
- Scrub the base, walls, rim and the underside of the lid.
- Use a disinfectant to kill bacteria.
- Rinse and leave it to dry.
It takes time and you will probably get splashed.
The dirty water problem
The water from a bin clean contains food residue, bacteria and cleaning products. It shouldn’t go into the drain in the road or on your drive. Those are usually surface water drains, which carry rainwater to local streams and rivers without treatment. Pouring dirty water into them causes pollution.
If you clean a bin at home, empty the dirty water into a foul drain, such as a toilet or outside gully that takes waste water from the house.
What a professional clean does
Our bin cleaning machine is mounted on the van. It washes each bin inside and out, sanitises it with a concentrated hypochlorite solution that kills 99% of known germs, and deodorises it. The water runs through a three-stage filter and is recycled on the van, so nothing runs down your drive. The products we use are biodegradable.
Which is right for you?
If you have the time, space and somewhere suitable for the water, DIY is fine. If you’d rather not deal with it, or you want it done regularly without thinking about it, book a clean.
See how often to clean your bin, or go straight to wheelie bin cleaning.
