I scrape into the garbage all the big stuff because I’m lazy. That is, I find introducing large food stuffs into the garbage disposal to be a chore that is more easily dealt with by scraping it into the regular garbage. The small stuff, I don’t scrape, again because I’m lazy and washing it with water (or just dumping it into the dishwasher) is easier than scraping every little teeny tiny bit of food. I view the garbage disposal as being a convenience over needing to have that annoying filter that always clogs making me have to stick my hand into yucky water to clean it out.
This might be a sitcom convention or something, but it’s not the way anyone ever actually does it, save possibly for bachelors who have a sink full of dirty dishes and only wash as much as they need at a time. Ordinarily, we fill up a couple of basins, one with soapy water and the dirty dishes, and one with clear water for rinsing, and the water’s only running for as long as it takes to fill the basins.
Interesting article on the negatives of garbage disposals at treehugger.
Argues that they potentially could overwhelm the capacity of the treatment plant if adopted in too high numbers too quickly. More an issue for new markets I think than most U.S. municipalities. But I did find the argument about bio-gas capturing to make a lot of sense. In my area there are no wastewater treatment facilities with bio-gas capture that I know of. But the large regional solid waste landfill site does do bio-gas capture. Guess I’ll do my part and start putting more organics in the trash and less down the pipe.
Did you miss the part about running a construction department? All told, I worked in the construction/maintenance/facilities management business for forty years, most of which was in residential properties. I worked with a lot of plumbers and made a lot of late night service calls for plugged drains/pipes over the years. I’ve never talked to a plumber who had any use for a disposal, although I didn’t quiz every single one that I met. So it’s more than just my word: it’s several decades of professional experience. Does that round it out a bit more for you?
Now that we’ve solved the garbage disposal issue (by the way, a very common brand in the U.S. is “In-Sink-Erator”) can we discuss what the point is of a garbage compactor? When I was growing up, all our rich friends had them. Haven’t seen one in years.
The running water method is definitely out there in the wild (cite), although I concede it may be less common than I imagined, however, Machine Elf’s post #17 sounds like it may be implying a running stream (the bit about strainer getting repeatedly clogged during a single session).
First of all, I’ve never had a kitchen sink with two basins. Second, I’m disgusted by the idea of filling up a sink which gradually gets more and more polluted by food waste. I can’t imagine that any but the very first dish washed in that bacterial soup can possibly be clean in any sense.
I do it the way Mangetout describes and I know a lot of other people who do. I run the water and scrub and rinse each dish individually under running water.
It fits right in with the future father in law’s experience. Public housing, apartments, and rental properties are often over represented when it comes to sewer issues. He attributes it to people not knowing better and/or not caring what they put down the drain.
Can disposals contribute to sewer problems? I’ll buy that.
I’m not all that familiar with Montreal. Is Côte-Saint-Luc an upscale neighbourhood? Also, you talk about newer condominiums, which I guess may be intended for affluent young professionals and thus more likely to include a variety of time-saving domestic devices.
The meal you just ate is riddled with pollution and bacteria? :eek:
I should clarify that whilst I describe this method, I don’t subscribe to it. I use the two-bowl method, and I’m fairly sure I get the dishes cleaner than I could by running them under a constant stream in anything like the same time.
We replaced our disposer a year or so ago. The old one came with our house, and was probably the cheapest one they could get. Over ten years, it had got to the point where it was clogging about once a week, according to my wife, and she was being very careful what she put down it. Never had to call the plumber, but it did have to be plunged.
I replaced it with a new, middle quality in-sink-erator, and now she doesn’t worry about it, and it never clogs, even with a “thanksgiving worth of potato skins” put down it. Much quieter, too.
I would expect that public housing, apartments, and other rental properties would be the ones to have cheaper, older disposers, so it’s perhaps not surprising that those would also have disposer backup problems.
But for a new (I’ve only had it a year or two, so I can’t say yet how it will hold up) good quality disposer, egg shells, potato skins, apple cores, citrus rings, and vegetable stems are just not a problem.
I’m in-between you two. One bowl with soap water, and rinse using the running water. I start with just a little soap water, and rinse into the soap water until it’s full enough, then rinse into the other sink.
Am I the only one composting my vegetable waste? I have a green bin, so it could all go in that if I didn’t have a garden, but mostly my potato peels and onion skins and egg shells and coffee grounds go in my yard composter.
