I wouldn’t think a garbage disposal would make much difference, depending on how fine your grounds are. . . but, what’s so “painstaking” about putting them in the garbage? That’s where mine go. I don’t think I’ve ever put grounds in the sink.
But, yeah, the garden is a good idea too.
Those of us using French Presses don’t have a filter to make picking the grounds up and dumping them in the trash easier. You have grounds and a bit of liquid in the carafe. It’s a pain in the butt to get them all out. For me at least, it’s easier to dump it down the drain, rinse the carafe, add water and flip on the disposal.
If I had a garden, I guess I’d add more water to the carafe, and dump it there.
When I use the drip maker, I put it all in the trash can.
Nothing particularly painstaking about putting them into the waste basket. Getting them out of the sink could be something of a PITA, though.
While this was true once, modern piping takes into account that garbage disposals exist, and are used. And they aren’t used for human waste solids, either.
For me, it’s the half cup or so of liquid that would go in with them. I try not to put liquids in my trash can if I can avoid it.
Yup. Liquids in the garbage is something I try to avoid at all costs.
Sure grease can cling to the pipes and dirt is heavy and can settle at the bottom of the S-shaped trap, but coffee grounds?
A garbage disposal can handle human waste solids. Trust me.
What “modern piping” do you think is out there? I’m an engineer for a municipal sewer utility. The average age of our sewer mains is over 100 years old. I guarantee that when those sewers were built, the engineers who designed them did not envision the use of garbage disposers. Even new subdivisions with new sewer mains generally tie into old sewer interceptors.
Realize that there is more to the sewer system than just your house plumbing. For houses, the interior plumbing may or may not meet modern code standards, depending on when the house was built and the skill of the plumber who installed it. Residential building inspection is notoriously lax in many places, too. The house plumbing, of course, then combine into a single service lateral connection (which carries everything, including human waste), which then goes to the sewer main in the street.
In any event, the problem is not just with the pipes; it’s with the available treatment capacity of the wastewater treatment plant. Some municipalities, facing mandatory multi-million plant upgrades, have actually banned the use of garbage disposers, even going so far as to require house inspections when property is transferred.
Grease combines with other solids, including coffee grounds, to clog sewer mains in the street, even if they don’t cause a problem in the house plumbing.
Sewer operators would generally prefer that you keep everything out of the sewers except for wastewater, human waste, and toilet paper. To be fair, this preference has to be balanced against alternative means of disposal of food waste, such as incineration or landfilling. So while the complete exclusion of food waste in sewers may not always be feasible (or even desirable), it is certainly desirable to keep out those things I mentioned in my previous post, including fats, oils, grease, etc.
In my experience, coffee grounds fall into the category of something I’d keep out of house plumbing as well as the sewers.
And anyone who puts anything other than human waste and toilet paper into their septic system is just rolling the dice. Septic systems are almost never properly sized for a garbage disposer, and people who use them with septic systems rarely pump the tank often enough for the disposer. Should their system fail, however, it’s their nickel.
An added reason for putting the coffee grounds in the garden, that no one has mentioned so far: dumping them into the plumbing (either sink or toilet) involves washing them down with running water. That is a waste of a gallon or two of fresh water – something that is becoming increasingly scarce in the USA, as underground aquifers are being depleted.
The coffie grounds will easely stick to any grease on the sides of the pipes or trap, then more grease sticks to the grounds and so it builds. In the high rise where I work if a tennant has a plugged drain and there is coffie grounds in the trap or lines they are billed our time to clean the drain, and I am in no hurry.
My husband and I have been wondering about this very thing for awhile. I figure the toilet is meant for liquid, solid, and liquidy/solidy organic matter so I put it there. It’s too liquidy to put in the garbage, and he was pouring them in the sink for awile, and we learned that’s bad. He heard that coffee grounds are good for the garden, so he’s been collecting them in a bucket under the table. Can I tell you how gross that looks? And I’m afraid we make way way more grounds than would be good for our very very small garden. So, I guess it’s time to build a compost bin.
So, what is the harm in simply throwing the ground into the garbage? Why bother disposing of them in the sink or toilet in the first place?
Yes, according to my SIL who is an avid gardener.
I just toss 'em in the garbage. No harm, no foul. I should start a compost heap, but until then, they go in the garbage.
See post 25.
That is where you lost me. Where does the half cup of liquid come into play? It that an artifact of using a french press? I would describe my coffee ground as “moist,” but no more so than soil. There certainly is not any liquid that drips from them by the time the grounds get dumped.
Yes, it is the result of using a French press and not squeezing every last bitter drop of liquid out of the grounds. When I finish pouring coffee from my extremely modest 32-oz. French press, there is at least half a cup of liquid still in the grounds.
So after you have taken your coffee, then squeeze the last bitter amount out, pour that down the drain and the put the grounds in the trash. That way you are keeping the majority of grounds out of the pipe system and not putting liquid in your trash. A win-win.
With a French Press, the grounds are sitting directly in the water. There’s no filter to easily pick them up. You can stand over the trash can and scoop them out with a spoon or something, but you’re never going to get it all, and it’s really easy to make a mess.
If you have a disposal and municipal water, it’s really not that big a deal to put them down the sink, IMO. I’ve done it for years and never had a clog.
If I didn’t have a disposal or was on a septic system, I would either make the effort to put them in the trash or in a garden or compost pile.
Concur.