Repair, Don’t Replace — A Yard Debris Bin Saga
by Katy on June 12, 2024 · 33 comments
I mentioned in a recent blog post how excited I was that my out of town neighbors let me set my yard debris bin out with their weekly pickup. (We share garbage service with our other neighbors and it would be another week before it was our turn.) I needed to hose out the slurry that collects in the bottom, as the smell was not aging with grace! I’d somehow never made the connection of how the broken lid invited Oregon’s ever present rain.
What can I say? My mind was on other things like the price of eggs and garbage picked flowerpots.
Sure I could get the garbage company to give us a shiny new bin, but my goal is always to avoid unnecessary replacement of functional goods. However, plastic is not repairable in the way that wood, fabric or metal is, so this was going to be a good enough endeavor.
Time for duct tape and zip-ties to enter the chat.
Please enjoy the fix for the underside of the lid and no, it ain’t pretty.
And here’s how I created a facsimile of the hinge using a humble pair of zip-ties. Bow down to my elite skills!
However, there’s no reason this repairs to be devoid of beauty — after all, what is function without form?
There, that’s better! Will my repair job last forever? Unlikely, but it saves this huge hunk of plastic from the landfill and dare I say it . . . adds a touch of beauty to an otherwise dull object.
Better. Better is good.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
Genius! And the artistry!!
Can this can be my Mensa application?
I am a duct tape gurl myself!!!!! I repaired my trash picked kitchen chair with it…. lol
Duct tape for the win!
A work of art!!!
Duct tape for the win!
I have been known to use the heavy plastic from almond milk jugs and some Loctite glue to repair stuff. It’s a bit labor-intensive to cut up a jug, though.
That’s a really good idea!
Nice save! And with items you already had on hand, even better! Love the sweet flower detail. I just had a bit of a frugal save with my giant compost collection bin too – I was considering paying for a curbside service to come out and deep clean it because it was getting foul. But when I saw the price for that, I decided to just buck up, crawl around in there and scrub the dang thing out myself, and then gave it a light mist of a spray disinfectant that smells like mangoes and hibiscus. It’s a pleasure to open the lid now! haha
I didn’t have any disinfectant, but I did sprinkle some cinnamon around inside as I’d seen that it can help with flies. Either way, it smells better.
Cinnamon sounds like a lovely option, as well! Mutual high-fives all around.
A young woman here in Maine ( daughter went to school with her) made her wedding dress out of duct tape!
Nice repair. If it doesn’t hold up over time perhaps your sanitation company will do what ours did and just replace the lid. Ours had a big crack and let rain in too but is great now.
I hope they have that capability. It would be so wasteful to replace the entire can for a component part.
Although of course I admire the creativity and artistry of your bin lid repair, I’m also nonplussed by the whole idea of collecting yard debris in bins (where I imagine it can easily turn anaerobic and smelly even if a bin’s lid isn’t cracked). In my Central NY city, yard waste is piled on curbs and collected once a month in dump trucks (guys with rakes handle small piles, and frontloaders collect large ones). This method certainly has its own disadvantages, but at least the piles (usually) don’t stink to high heaven.
Great repair and pretty too! IMO, no home should be without an assortment of zip ties in various sizes and duct tape in many colors. I always purchase these items at estate sales when I see them.
I was at a Hoity-toity Christmas party last year when I snag my boot on the threshold of door leading outside. It partially pulled the sole from the boot . One of the caterers saw what happened and proceeded to repair my boot with duct tape saving me a bit of embarrassment. This is one of countless times that it has come in handy. It’s too bad it a roll of doesn’t fit in an evening bag. 🙂
When I travel I wrap a couple of metres of duct tape around an old plastic vitamin bottle. I put assorted safety pins, nappy pins, fishing line and some rolled up zip ties in it. I have probably used it as often to rescue other travellers as for myself, from busted bag zippers shoe repairs . My other minimal space/ weight carry on is assorted zip lock bags, for left over food, wet clothes, a big one for wet seats at bus depots etc. I travel ( up to 6 weeks, 6 countries) with just a back pack I keep under 7kg( about 15 lbs)
@ Coral Clarke, Brilliant. am travelling with my mom and sister and brother-in-law in a month – lots of bussing and I hate having too much stuff. I DO have lots of old plastic vitamin bottles. Will be making one of your handy kits (and adding needles and thread and a few buttons) tomorrow! We always travel with zip lock bags, and a plastic knife or two (as well as a folding sharp knife as we aren’t flying). Those zip locks are filled with carefully constructed sandwiches at breakfast – particularly at breakfast buffets. I am not a big breakfast eater, so I just take mine for later! the bags fold up small and can be rinsed out in hotel rooms…
Oh yes, ziploc bags for traveling are a must!
I love the old saying, “If it doesn’t move and it should, WD-40 it. If it moves and it shouldn’t, duct tape it.” I love duct tape and last year could not resist buying a roll of Santa duct tape.
DH used to say that he could fix 80% of the problems he encountered as a landlord with WD-40, duct tape, and/or his Swiss Army knife.
And he was right!
I too like to fix things rather than replace them, if I have the talent necessary to do the fix. I also just hold onto things that look unsightly in some way but still are functional and usable-for example, I have a spatula that became slightly melted when I set it too close to a burner. It doesn’t look pretty but it still flips pancakes just fine.
It’s a war wound.
Currently my large greenhouse (20 X 50 feet) has a few ‘wounds’ that are artfully repaired with cross pieces of Tuck Tape, which is a lovely bright shade of red. Running a bunch of cross pieces and a few lengthwise along a split (old fold lines in the plastic finally giving up after 10 years (!!!!) on the greenhouse) makes for a very satisfying scar – kind of like a football’s binding, actually.
Great repair, Katy! Have you considered going one step further and trying the hairdryer colour improvement technique? I have heard that you can (carefully) aim a hair dryer at faded old garden chairs and their lustre returns. … don’t know if it would do anything to the mildew stains, though.
Here at Sweet Maggie’s Farm we either fill the back of the truck with branches, and run to the local garden debris dump site, or we add the pre-compost to our ever-present compost piles.
I’ve seen videos of that being done to sport stadium chairs. However, I don’t have any plastic patio furniture.
I think you need more than a hairdryer – the stadiums use a blowtorch.
There are Youtube videos of people using blowtorches, but also using heat-guns, which I would be more comfortable with!
I always see those videos and hope to hell that the employees are given proper breathing protection gear for a day of standing over melted plastic!
If our recycling or garbage bins are damaged even slightly, our city trash collection takes the bin and doesn’t even let you know. We had that happen recently when we couldn’t find a bin anywhere after trash was collected so realized they must have taken it. Unfortunately they also don’t automatically replace the bin, so we have to contact them to request and wait for another. We were lucky and had a new one by the next week, but others have waited months!
That’s annoying.
So my recycle bin is cracked on the side and it’s slowly getting longer. I’m hanging onto this can as long as it retains its function. It is a long crack, too much for duct tape, but I love your fix!
Maybe “sew” it together with zip ties? Burn hole with a soldering iron?
I think you need more than a hairdryer – the stadiums use a blowtorch.