Pail Liner

I used to wash 15 buckets a day back when I picked up compostable food scraps in 5 gallon buckets in Victoria. The buckets had to be clean enough to sit for the next week in an office environment without stinking. It would take me 1 hour to wash those 15 buckets.

Then I started lining those pails with paper before I dropped them off for people. All of a sudden, clean-up time for those 20 buckets shrunk from a full hour to less than 15 minutes! My workload was cut by a factor of 4, just because I took 10 seconds to line my pails.

compost-pail-emptying

Paper or Plastic?

I used to use paper bags from the grocery store – they fit a 5 gallon bucket perfectly. Try it yourself.

Unfortunately I would run out of paper bags really quickly, so I ended up developing a method to line pails with newspaper instead.

newspaper-pail-liner

However – newspaper doesn’t offer a whole lot of protection and it can’t handle much moisture at all. Which is why so many people prefer plastic pail liners.

The Stiffness Factor

The cheapest pail liners are just glorified garbage bags. That’s great if it’s just garbage you’re trying to deal with – but a more burly pail liner can hold its shape even the bucket to provide the structure.

pail-liner-in-steel-bucket

stiff-pail-liner

 

Ever tried to repair a hole in a plastic bucket? No matter how much duct tape you use, water will still eventually find a way to leak. When you’re trying to restore the liquid retention capability of a bucket, these stiff pail liners from Vestil are the way to go. It’s similar to the way we fix a plastic bladder in our Walls o Water install a new bladder.

Bucket Preservation

You’ll want to primarily use a pail liner to keep a bucket in good condition. There’s a few reasons you might want to do this.

If you’re using a metal bucket to store some kind of liquid, you run the risk of the bucket getting rusty. I’ve seen this regularly, and it’s a major reason why plastic buckets are more popular. With a good 5 gallon pail liner, you keep your steel bucket clean and rust-free.

In brewing beer, you always want to make sure your brew vessel stays completely scratch free. That’s because every little scratch or ding offers a toehold for bacteria which can ruin your batch. A pail liner offers an extra layer of insurance against anything that can scratch of dent the inside of your brew bucket.

And as I’ve already mentioned, a pail liner will help keep your bucket clean when you’re keeping anything nasty in it. That includes used motor oil, moldy sandwiches, or even human waste in a 5 gallon bucket composting toilet system.

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5 thoughts on “Pail Liner

  1. In your blog-pix.. Now that’s a Composter about as good as it gets…

    I need a lot of thin plastic 20L bucket liners for the container gardens I’m planning.. Bucket gardening is a good plan for when “noah’s flood” happens. We’ll be able to grow gardens on floating barges and rafts.. I forsee the water level on my street 4-feet above the road 4-years from now.. a nagging premonition that I just can’t shake.. I’m preparing for the worst.. I have enough lumber to build a floating garden.. and have invented a steel-dam that will keep my house, vehicles, and sheds dry.. I gave the invention to a metal shop, in return for promise of a free unit around my property…

    Seems humanity has killed this planet, and this planet is in process of washing us away, to start the life-experiment all over again fresh…

    In topic “nibiru”.. Me thinks that’s a replacement sun for when our sun flickers off.. and the new habitable planet, as a “lifeboat”, for humanity to jump onto when the great flood happens and planet earth turns into a deadly waterworld…

    You know those paint tray liners. I need bucket liners of the same thin plastic, to grow healthy foods in those old oil buckets that I’ve washed as good as I can.. But my lady says “I won’t eat anything grown in those filthy buckets!”.. so I need bucket liners.. I’m searching the Net. If I don’t find any, I’ll suggest them to various plastics manufacturers.. If they can make a dollar on it, they’ll do it..

    With petroleum prices soaring, and oil reserves dropping, soon used 20L plastic oil buckets will be nearly impossible to acquire cheaply, if at all, given that plastic is a petroleum product.. I have about 300 cleaned ones stored away in my shed attic, for when the hard times hit us hard, and food is scarce and extremely pricey, and desperate moralless people are breaking into homes to steal the contents of pantries and fridges.. It’s coming.. It’s happening in some places already.. I’m considering installing sturdy locks on our food stores in the near future…

  2. I work for a residential food scrap pickup company. We line our 5 gallon buckets with compostable bio-bags. Not as cheap as using newspaper, and they often begin to decompose before the buckets get clean, but waterproof & quick to use when we’re dealing with 900 buckets.

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