I used my french press in the new house for the first time on Sunday, and as I went to wash it out, remembered, “Oh yeah, I don’t have a garbage disposal. Crap.” I painstakingly got the grounds out and into the garbage can, not wanting to clog the sink.
Am I correctly assuming that washing coffee grounds down the sink is a Very Bad Idea? Any suggestions on how to deal in the future? How hard is it to install a garbage disposal?
Great in a compost heap or even just buried directly into the garden dirt.
Coffie grounds down any drain is looking for a problem, with a garbage disposal you are still looking for the same trouble.
So in the future I can just dump the whole business into my garden? Sweet.
I’ve dumped coffee grounds down the disposal for years and never had a problem.
I’ve been pouring my French press grounds down the non-disposal side of my sink for over a year now with no ill effects. I make sure to rinse them down with plenty of water.
Dunno about the native dirt where you live, but around these parts, the soil (well, clay) is so alkaline that a little acidity from the coffee grounds is a good thing. One more vote for the compost pile, or spread thinly around your plants.
My Mom always used to dump the grounds from her french press into the toilet. I don’t know if this is also a very-bad-idea, but she did it for years with no problem. She had a septic tank, don’t know if that matters or not.
If I use a paper filter, can I bury that in the garden along with the coffee grounds?
I have also always put them in the drain without problem. Fat and hair are the most likely things to clog drains. It also depends on the specific drain. A well-designed drain should have absolutely no problem handling coffee grounds but if your drain is already clogged and drining slowly then anything you put in there is not going to help.
In my experience older American houses often have drains that are very badly designed, with insuficcient diameter and pitch and which clog easily. I am living in just such a house right now. There is a horizontal stretch of drain just under the toilet and, in spite of it being an older huge-flow toilet, I still add a big bucket of water as I flush because if not it is likely that the waste does not go all the way to the vertical stack and it clogs.
It’s a bad idea, especially if she has a septic system.
In general, your toilet is not a garbage can. Toilets are designed for human waste and toilet paper. Anything else is rolling the dice and asking for problems with your house plumbing, service lateral, and sewer main/septic system.
Or collect enough of them and open up a refinery! 
Oh, yes, you can add the paper filter. In compost terms that will balance the “green” of the coffee with some “brown”.
Coffee grounds have the potential to clog a drain because they don’t break down fast enough. Any minor flaw in the drain line will eventually catch up to the owner. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a drain line that wasn’t properly sloped or worse, negatively sloped. I had to cut the ceiling out of my kitchen because the original drain line in the upstairs bathroom was consumed by drain cleaner because of improper slope. It was fun.
You certainly can. I’ve been dumping coffee grounds + paper filters in my compost bin every day for three months now. When I turned the compost this moring, I came across the remains of maybe four paper filters. The rest had disintegrated completely into the pile.
Originally Posted by jeepus
My Mom always used to dump the grounds from her french press into the toilet. I don’t know if this is also a very-bad-idea, but she did it for years with no problem. She had a septic tank, don’t know if that matters or not.
But at least it smelled great in the morning.
Yeah, I would keep them and sprinkle them over my garbage can to absorb bad odors. Keeps from having to change the garbage bag before it’s full.
I dumped my French press coffee grounds down the sink for about six years in my last apartment. Of course, I was renting and could call in the cavalry should it have caused a problem, but the only clogs I ended up having were grease-related, not coffee-ground related.
It’s probably worth noting that your average garbage disposal probably doesn’t do much to coffee grounds — most garbage disposals output particles that are less than 3 mm, but they wouldn’t do much to a 1 mm (or smaller) coffee ground. So at the very least, you should feel as confident dumping your coffee grounds down the sink as you did dumping them down the disposal in your former home.
Just a note: if the choice is between dumping the grounds in the toilet, and dumping them down the drain, then that’s not going to matter any. Indeed, the larger and faster flow of water through the toilet would tend to make a stuck drain from the grounds less likely (toilet drains are intended to handle the flow of solids).
The article includes the phrase “for all intensive purposes”.
twitch
However, given the choice of a clogged toilet (worst-case scenario: turd soup on bathroom floor) and a clogged sink (worst-case scenario: sink clog) I know which one I’d pick.
I wouldn’t dump them down the toilet or the sink drain. After all, the grounds end up in the same pipe.
Toilets and sewer pipes are designed for human waste solids, not necessarily coffee grounds. Worse, however, are fats, oils, and grease (FOG), as well as hair, tampons, razor blades, paper towels, kitty litter, and dirt. By far the worst is hazardous waste illegally dumped down the sewer, such as paint thinner, gasoline, or motor oil.