How Much Water Does It Take To Clean A Wheelie Bin?

One of the environmental issues of cleaning your wheelie bin yourself is the use and waste of water.

For the purpose of the post I have made some average assumptions that are fairly standard.

The average size of a garden hose is 12mm with a 45PSI. We all have varying lengths of hose but I’m going to use a 25m hose. I won’t bore you with the maths but that equates out at approximately 34 litres per minute.

let that sink in – 34 Litres per minute

How long do you take to clean your bins? Before I created Coastal Bin Busters it would be at least 10 minutes of hosing. (maybe longer?)

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that you have just used 340 litres of water to clean your wheelie bin!

Cost of Water

A survey held by Canstar Blue in 2020 showed that the average water bill in NSW was $246 as was pretty consistent across other states too.

In Ballina the rates for water usage is as follows:

1000 kilolitres cost $2.35 up to 350 kilolitres per year. ($0.007 pre litre) this goes up to $0.004 when your yearly usage goes over 350 kilolitres. (350,000 litres)

If you are lucky enough to be able to connect to the Recycled water tap the cost drops to $0.0018/ litre.

Using the figures above to clean your wheelie bin costs approximately 340 litres multiplied by $0.002 = $0.68.

I don’t suppose this is a lot of money to most people but when you clean your bins once a month for 3 bins it starts to build up. Write a post about “How Often Should I Clean My Wheelie Bin?”

$0.68 x 3 bins = $2.04 multiplied by 12 months = $24.48 a year.

Wasting Water

Now we have got the cost worked out, we have to take into account what happens to the water when you are cleaning your bins.

This is probably a more significant effect of cleaning your wheelie bin yourself than the cost.

We all know by now that the environment is very precious and I would say that most of us do the right thing by Mother Nature. However are you taking care to not let your waste go into the storm drains?

We use recycled water in our machine and it’s captured in a specially built tank that has filters built in. This saves the water from going down the storm drain, also it doesn’t leave a mess on your garden or footpath.

To clean your bin yourself you need to use a hose or gurney to wash the sides and all the water collects in the bottom, and this stops you from seeing whether or not you’ve cleaned it properly. So, then you tip the bin up and it goes all over the garden or footpath, leaving behind all the bits of rubbish that you still need to pick up.

By using Coastal Bin Busters you will have no mess, a better environment for your garden and community and a nice smelling bin.