5 things to never throw in your cart loose

Your cart is a plastic box with a lid. That is the entire design. It doesn’t drain and it doesn’t rinse itself — it holds whatever you put in it, outside, in the sun, until the truck comes. Whatever leaks or slides out of a torn bag lands on the floor and the walls, dries, bakes, and becomes the smell you notice from the driveway. Nearly all of it is preventable with a knot in a bag and about four seconds of effort. Five things earn those four seconds every time.

The five worst offenders

1. Raw meat trays and poultry packaging

The soaker pad under the chicken is holding raw juice, and the tray is not sealed. Drop it in loose and you have spread a thin layer of poultry drippings across the bottom of a container that sits outdoors for days. E. coli, Salmonella, and Listeria are ordinary kitchen concerns, and warmth is the thing that speeds them up. Bag it, tie it, and double-bag anything that already leaked once indoors.

2. Anything with liquid still in it

Half a cup of old soup. The last inch of milk. The melted ice at the bottom of a cooler. Liquid is the delivery system — it carries everything else into every corner of the cart, then evaporates and leaves the solids behind as a film. Pour it out in the sink first, then bin the container. Grease and cooking oil are the exception: sealed jar, not the drain.

3. Greasy takeout containers

Grease is why a cart can smell awful long after it looks empty. It coats the plastic, holds odor, and shrugs off a garden hose entirely — cold water and grease have never gotten along. The pizza box liner, the fried chicken bucket, the foil pan with taco drippings still pooled in it: wrap them before they go in.

4. Pet waste

You already bag it on the walk, which is the hard part. The mistake happens at the cart — an untied bag, or a loose scoop of used litter that breaks apart on impact and coats everything under it. Keep it sealed. The neighbor wheeling their cart past yours will never know, which is precisely the goal.

5. Yard clippings piled in with food waste

Grass and leaves go in wet and heavy, then compact into a mat that traps moisture underneath. Layer food scraps into that and you have built something warm, damp, and sealed — a generous way of describing a fly nursery. Keep yard debris and food waste separate and contained, not dumped in loose together.

Flies don’t find your cart because it’s a cart. They find it because something inside is loose, wet, and warm.

Which cart it belongs in is the city’s call

Austin hands you three carts — trash, recycling, and compost — and each one has its own rules about what belongs inside, including how food scraps and yard trimmings are meant to be handled. Those rules are specific and they change, so we are not going to guess at them for you. Look up your address through Austin Resource Recovery and take it from the source. Sorting is the city’s department. Bagging is yours. What ends up caked to the inside of the cart is ours.

Bagging keeps a clean cart clean

What bagging cannot do is undo what is already in there. A cart that has quietly absorbed years of groceries is past the point where habits fix it — the residue is bonded into the plastic, down in ribs and corners a garden hose has never once reached. That is the job we built the trailer for: 200°F water at 4,000 PSI, 360-degree heads working inside an enclosed chamber, wastewater captured on board instead of flushed into the storm drain. The wash kills 99.9% of bacteria, at the curb, while the cart is empty and you are somewhere else.

We are putting the first Austin routes together now, and you can get your street on the list before we roll. Until we reach you: tie the bag.