I was just reading this thread and wondered what the purpose of a garbage disposal unit actually is.
As I understand it, it grinds up organic food material and disposes of it through the plumbing system to the water treatment facility.
We don’t have these in Canada. Why wouldn’t you just dispose of the stuff as garbage, or as most Canadian municipalities do now, stream it to a composting facility for use in gardens, etc?
Why overburden the water treatment facility with something you can just throw away or recycle?
If you put it in the garbage it goes in the landfill, if you put it in the (Milwaukee) sewer system it becomes Milorginate, the stuff you fertilize your lawn with. In some areas of Milwaukee have a garbage disposal is code because it means less in waste in the landfill.
A GD is not meant to be used as a general garbage chute, although some people do put everything vaguely organic down them… vegetable trimmings, bones, large amounts of leftover food, etc.
IMVHO, they are for the larger things scraped and rinsed off plates and cookware, to keep it from clogging the drain. Larger stuff goes in the garbage or (if you use them) compost bins.
They were famously illegal in NYC until very recently, and may still be restricted. It was a status symbol to have one.
Just FTR, small bones (and fruit pits) are good for the garbage disposal, they keep it clean of debris that will eventually rot and make it smelly.
Personally, about once a month I fill mine with ice and run that through it, it’s disgusting what flys back up the other sink.
Cite, page 9 of this manual (all ISE manuals say the same thing as far as I know)
Putting actual garbage in the garbage causes it to smell, resulting in the need to take it out more often. Separating out material for composting uses precious minutes. Many Americans would be bitterly resentful at being asked to do either of these things. I don’t know the history of the garbage disposal - I assume someone will be along shortly with that - but I am sure it was introduced as a labor-saving device.
Having said that, they are not used everywhere in the U.S. There are very few in New York City (infrastructure not designed to support them). I assume people on septic tanks would be less likely to have them.
Some cities (San Francisco comes to mind) are now mandating composting and building infrastructure to collect it.
Some of us like having a compost pile and have cleaned out too many clogged disposers and rarely use the ones we have.
Yeah, it’s for the little bits of stuff that sticks to plates and pans. Imagine burning stuff in a pan. You soak it, then as you scrape the stuff out you grind it up with the disposal.
They make pieces of food smaller so that they don’t build up in your pipes and clog them. I would never put big hard things down them, nor fibrous things like artichoke leaves. I doubt even compost-heavy areas require you to compost food waste that is not easily cleanable without a stead flow of water. What would do you do, filter everything through a sieve? SF etc. has them all over the place. And you don’t put actual garbage down there nor whole carcasses. They should be run fairly frequently, especially before you use the dishwasher.
I have never had a problem with smell, nor build up. They get stuck if you put the aforementioned fibrous material or non-food objects like bottle caps in (accidentally, I hope!) but otherwise they work well.
Sure we do. They are banned in the current City of Toronto, but my parent’s house in the former North York had one, as does my sister’s house and my brother’s in Vaughan.
Here is a link to garbage disposals sold at that most Canadian institution, Canadian Tire.
I refuse to ever live anywhere that doesn’t have a disposal. My girlfriends house in college didn’t and you could not escape that smell no matter where you were on the ground floor
They were not uncommon in Oakvillle in the sixties, when paper bags were used to hold garbage, first in the small kitchen can, and then carried out and placed in large garbage cans outside.
Paper bags work well enough for dry garbage, but poorly for wet garbage. Table scraps are wet, so when placed in paper bags, they soak the paper, which eventually tears.
By greatly reducing the amount of wet garbage in paper bags, garbage disposals reduced the frequency of trips outside to the large garbage cans, which in winter were a bit of an embuggerance.
By greatly reducing the amount of wet garbage, garbage disposals reduced the volume of rotting garbage in the large garbage cans outside, which made for less smelly summers, particularly when garbage pick-up was weekly.
Today, garbage, be it wet or dry, is easily contained in plastic bags – small ones inside the kitchen, and large ones outside. The plastic bags are durable enough to hold wet garbage, and can be tied off to stop the stench.
Either way, there are environmental downsides, for in Ontario our waste treatment centres are not what they could be, and plastic garbage bags are not renewable are not recycled.
on site food scrap composting is desirable but it needs to be done well to work and animal matter will attract rodents.
in a big city i noticed (in an area with houses and trees) that every (OK i can’t say i took an actual survey but no less than 80%) garbage can (plastic roller cart for mechanical pickup) had a squirrel hole chewed in a top corner. the coons would just open them.
The ban in Toronto is because the load on the sewage treatment system is too high and in the old city (pre-amalgamation) we have combined storm and sewage systems.
Now that we have green bin organic waste collection I personally would have no use for a garbage disposal.
Most of the houses in my last neighbourhood in Calgary had one, they were a popular feature in the 90’s. Newer construction no longer includes them because of the burden the ground up waste places on the water treatment plants, although you can purchase one at Canadian Tire and install it yourself.
I’m not really a fan, instead we have a compost bin and put most of the same stuff that would go down the drain into that. Bits of food from rinsing plates does end up clogging up the drain eventually, a dose of Draino a couple of times a year keeps things flowing.
Different municipalities have different rules depending on their waste treatment and landfill capacity. It’s a balance, since organic waste isn’t desirable in either and garburators use extra water. Here’s a quote I found from the City of Calgary:
It’s easier to peel vegetables over the sink than it is to peel them over a garbage can. Then it’s easier to put the peelings down the garbage disposal than it is to fish them out of the sink.
With a garbage disposal, you can get stuff to go down it without having to touch it, by running water on it.
It’s not good to put stuff that is largely liquid in the trash. It makes the trash heavier (this is a problem when you have to take it out) and can make it pretty gross.
Scraping food into the garbage can is more difficult if you have to soak it first, as you might have to do for food that has cooked onto pots or pans.
