Preventing maggots in trash

September 25, 2021 1:29 AM

How do I prevent fruit flies/gnats from laying eggs in my trash? They laid so many eggs in my trash can (lid, sides, nooks, crannies), I had to throw away my trash can. Luckily I caught it before they hatched because I would stop breathing forever if I saw that many maggots.

I did not know this could happen. I don’t eat meat and my garbage is mainly coffee grounds and paper, sometimes an egg shell. I’ve seen some gnats here and there but no flies.

How do I make sure this never happens again? I can’t take my trash out every day, I live alone and don’t have much trash. The trash can has a lid. Please help me.

Anonymous because I don’t want these maggots in my profile.

posted by anonymous to Home & Garden (17 answers total)

I use a smaller round trash can, and trash can liners, with a rubber band grip, like these. This keeps the bag secured to the trash can, preventing it from falling inside and potentially any spills from dirtying up the sides.

If I am cleaning out the fridge or tossing old produce, I put that into small trash bags (the size to line bathroom garbage cans) and immediately take it out.

You can buy commercial fruit fly traps, or make your own by putting a small amount of red wine vinegar into a little dish, followed by a squirt of dishwashing liquid, and stir it up. Alternatively, drink a bottle of red wine, leave a 1/2" or so at the bottom, and leave it out for a few days. You may have to repeat this several times to cut down on your fruit fly population.

Hunt around to make sure there are no forgotten food items attracting them, such as old potatoes or old bananas.

Wash the trash can once a week, including the lid. I use generic Pine Sol, and wear rubber gloves.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 2:41 AM on September 25, 2021

We put all our food waste in a small ceramic compost caddy, which we take out every day (in our case to a communal food waste bin, in your case it could be a regular bin). You can get really small, biodegradable compost bags for this. A quick rinse with hot soapy water takes care of the fruit flies (which are a definite problem if we don't empty it daily!)

Everything that goes in the regular bin gets a quick rinse under the tap. There is generally nothing in there that would attract fruit flies, so we don't have an issue there.
posted by stillnocturnal at 4:26 AM on September 25, 2021

We have so little kitchen waste that we use a small bin like this one with a small plastic bag and we take it out every 2 - 3 days. If you need to, you could still keep your full-size trash can for dry waste you can't recycle.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:33 AM on September 25, 2021

Clean your trash can. Preferably every time you change the bag. The lid, too.

(But yeah, keeping compostable food waste separate from dry waste is better for both maggot/mood control and for cutting down on waste in landfills. Apartment dwellers in places that don’t have municipal composting can get a worm bin for composting, which is a plastic tub that lives inside your trash or utility closet. Then do some guerilla gardening (adding nutritious soil to local sidewalk trees or similar places that look like they could use it) at night with the compost produced when you need to get rid of some.)
posted by eviemath at 4:46 AM on September 25, 2021

I put any trash that might attract bugs in a small plastic bag in my freezer until I can take it out. I used to use plastic grocery bags for this, but I ran out during the pandemic (stores that deliver won't use them) and bought these. The worst thing that happens is they leak sometimes, and then I double bag.
posted by FencingGal at 5:02 AM on September 25, 2021

Small bin, tight fitting lid, frequent empties.

As far as gnats and fruit flies, here's the Rolls-Royce of traps:

1) Buy a small axial/muffin fan with power leads like you'd put in a PC case, but with a plug for wall power. These are available at a bunch of places, Grainger, Amazon, etc.
2) Cut off the foot of a pair of pantyhose and stretch over the output side of the fan.
3) Power the fan on and place a slice of banana or similar on a very small dish or surface very close to the front of the fan intake.

Leave running. You should be able to clear out an entire room in a number of hours. I've tried the passive traps. They can work wonderfully, but can be tricky to tweak. This will absolutely destroy them. They can't fly very well, and will *all* get sucked in.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 6:35 AM on September 25, 2021

nthing: regularly empty the trash, clean the bin (I use my more intense cleaners for this, no organic gentle stuff or method or whatever). Let the trash can air out after emptying. Also, whenever I have had this it's usually obvious in retrospect that the trash was really due for emptying before I actually got around to it; high humidity in the trash can, noticeable smell, lots of organic material tossed recently. Humidity control is a big factor here IME, and some googling (which I've never thought to do before this response) confirms that humidity/moisture is a major factor in the fruit fly life cycle.

my garbage is mainly coffee grounds [...]

Let coffee grounds dry out somehow before putting them in the trash. If you aren't already doing this and are drinking coffee daily, I suspect this could actually make a big difference in your trash's humidity. I do pourover and just let the hario top dry over a glass jar before throwing the grounds out, but if you are doing something else you could toss the grounds into an open flat container of some kind rather than immediately into the trash (this is what my parents do aimed at composting, but it works well for getting the grounds dry).

They laid so many eggs in my trash can (lid, sides, nooks, crannies), I had to throw away my trash can.

I realize part of what's going on here is trying to avoid the ick factor in the first place, but: in my experience if you get any fruit fly eggs/maggots in your trash, there's always a lot, and no matter how many it's usually pretty trivial to clean, just use a good supply of the aforementioned cleaner and wear gloves (maybe a mask) if the situation really bothers you. Usually takes about five minutes of effort, then just let air out.
posted by advil at 7:28 AM on September 25, 2021

I do what FencingGal does. I can't compost where I live, so any food waste goes into a plastic bag in the freezer until trash day.
posted by Dolley at 7:32 AM on September 25, 2021

I bought a used mini-fridge for under $100. All wet or potentially smelly compost/trash goes in there. Life-changing!
posted by i_mean_come_on_now at 7:49 AM on September 25, 2021

Here's my One Weird Trick for never having maggotty trash again...

We used this system for our compost toilet to keep flies away (flies can disease, we wanted a system that was completely effective) and this was it. It worked so well, we did the same thing in our kitchen.

Use a separate trash can with lid and sleeve for your food waste. Find a source of dry, clean carbon matter (examples include: untreated sawdust from your local woodworkers, coffee chaff from your local coffee roasters, dry leaves in autumn). Fill the bottom of the trash can with plenty of carbon matter. Enough to soak up any liquid that makes it to the bottom of the can. Any time you throw something food away, cover it with carbon matter.

Bonus: now you have the start of a nice rich soil.
posted by aniola at 8:23 AM on September 25, 2021

I can’t see anything in your question that says NO to bug spray but we had a very serious maggot infestation in our trash can (it was horrible, you don’t even want to know) but in the end the little eggs were just in there waiting to hatch no matter what so basically we have a permethrin spray for emergencies. But the other measures we took were a large bin liner in the main trash can… putting any food waste into zip locks in the freezer till pick up day, putting anything particularly tempting for flies into other bins outside the house. We even started triple bagging and masking taping over the ties so no holes into the bags…Now we’ve moved to a new house with an enclosed trash can and had no trouble. But this was only a problem between June and august but it was awful.
posted by pairofshades at 9:01 AM on September 25, 2021

I have a large Tupperware in the bottom of my fridge that I use to accumulate food waste/tea leaves. I empty it when it gets full, or on green waste/trash day. The actual trash can is pretty dry except for residual condiments-in-takeout-containers, but those are not going to spawn wildlife in the interval that they live in my trash.
posted by janell at 9:02 AM on September 25, 2021

I'm not clear on what trash can you're talking about. Are you talking about one that's kept outside and dragged to the curb once a week? Or something that's kept inside?

In general, these are good principles:

1. separate food waste (including coffee) from dry random other garbage. The food waste is what you need to control, and you don't want it contaminating everything else.

2. all food trash gets put in a plastic baggie and taken out once a day, tied tightly.

3. use bleach if things go sideways

Where I grew up, not in the US, the custom was to dispose of the day's food scraps into a baggie which was kept in the corner of the kitchen sink (they had little special colander-like bins for it; a countertop bin would work as well.) Nobody had garbage disposals, so you'd scrape your carrots or cheese rinds etc into the baggie. Convenient for the duration of the day, then as part of the going to bed routine the baggie would be tied up and put into a closed pail that would be taken down to the outside bins the next morning.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:15 AM on September 25, 2021

I inadvertently discovered that plain white vinegar will work.
posted by brujita at 12:59 PM on September 25, 2021

I take my trash out about once a month and when I do it has to go into my car and I drive it to the transfer station. So I have a HUGE vested interest in no grossness. Here is my three part plan

1. trash is only basically for dry non-food stuff
2. compost goes into a sealed plastic coffee container in the kitchen and goes out weekly (no meat, no dairy or eggs). This is where all my coffee grounds go, it's ok if it's wet
3. anything with food waste in it (hot dog wrapper, egg shells, leftover packet of salad dressing) goes into a yogurt container in the freezer

When I go to take my trash out to the transfer station, I empty the bathroom trash and the freezer trash into the main trash and take it out with me. Kitchen trash can never gets grotty because it's nearly entirely dry. I wash it out after I take the trash out and let it dry. I have one of those trash cans with a liners that comes out so it's not too tough to actually wash.
posted by jessamyn at 6:33 PM on September 25, 2021

Feel as personally affronted by this as you deserve (little fiends!), but there's no reason to feel shame over some fruitflies. Do you see how many favorites Jack Karaoke got? That is because we have all dealt with this and that muffin fan advice is pure gold to somebody who's tried to fool around with jerryrigged fish traps for fruit flies more times than should even be legal. Should be sidebarred.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:06 PM on September 27, 2021

Pro exterminator here. Fruit Flies are always a sanitation issue. They need food to reproduce, so if you clean out the can thoroughly and use a can liner, it should eliminate the problem. The life cycle of a fruit fly is 1 to 2 weeks, so if you clean your can twice a week it will break the life cycle. Keep all fruit in the fridge, and peel any onions as soon as you bring them home from the store, and pretty soon it will all be a bad memory.
posted by ambulocetus at 10:48 AM on October 3, 2021