It has to be springtime because I have seen my first invasion of fruit flies by the ripening bananas in our kitchen. There are a load and a half of products out there for dealing with these little critters, but none of them need to be purchased or used. The best results I have had, in fact, come from the simplest and cheapest solution around.
Although there are also several different ways to build fruit fly traps at home, the one I’ve found to be basically foolproof is also one of the easiest to make.
For my traps, I just use an open container with a half inch or so of cider vinegar in the bottom. Use cider vinegar, instead of white vinegar, because it’s a tad sweeter, so more attractive to the flies. Then add two or three drops of your favorite dishwashing liquid to the vinegar.
That’s key, because we don’t care about collecting these guys in a covered corral of some sort. We want to do them in. The soap breaks down the surface tension of the vinegar, so the flies sink when they try to land on it, and they immediately drown.
No lid is required since nobody gets to fly back out of these traps, and you can put any number of them out if the flies seem to congregate in more than one place in your kitchen. I usually put one by the fruit bowl, and another near the compost canister.
The size of the container does not seem to matter. I use most any jar on its way to the recycling bin. You can use a small bowl if you don’t have a jar handy, but in my basement, there is always a jar handy! I’m not offended by the smell of cider vinegar, but I find that even right up next to the jar, it goes away in a day or so, but the fruit flies still manage to fight one another for access. When the collection gets large enough to be unsightly, just flush the stuff down the drain, and start again.
ORGANIC RECYCLING TOTES
The other good thing to talk about this week is that the town has succeeded in placing an additional pair of totes next to the Brunswick Rec Center at Brunswick Landing to be used for organics recycling. As you enter the parking area for the rec center, you can find the new kiosk for the totes on the right-hand side of the lot, about halfway in.
The totes at the leaf drop on Industry Road have been extremely successful at keeping ever-increasing amounts of organic materials out of our solid waste stream. These new drops will now provide the same opportunity for folks in East Brunswick, without their having to drive all the way downtown to find them. I expect we will be needing to add more totes out there very soon, as well.
We can thank the Public Works Department for managing and funding these drop-off points. They are an important “third leg” of our organics management program, along with backyard composting and subscription curbside pickup. They are free to use for any Brunswick resident. Just dump your kitchen canister into the tote, and you’re done. Nothing gets much simpler than that!
The Recycle Bin is a weekly column on what to recycle, what not to recycle, and why, in Brunswick. The public is encouraged to submit questions by email to brunsrecycleinfo@gmail.com. Harry Hopcroft is a member of the Brunswick Recycling and Sustainability Committee. This column is a product of his own research.
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