Never ever ever put a lot of food in a disposal.
A little bit of leftover from the plates before you put them in the dishwasher? Fine.
The last few peelings of the veggies after taking the majority to the trash? Fine.
Spoons? Not so fine. 
I’ve never lived in a house or apartment without a disposal.
I have some first hand experience that backs that up - as part of an Americrops program, I used to work with a city water engineer in Worcester MA, and (as of 1996), they had one messed up sewage system; we would see some serious food related clogs in some of the manholes we checked out (would take a long time to explain, but alongside some design failures, it could lead to septic overflow into stormwater pipes, would lead to sewage in the river). Again, echoing Chefguy, grease from the food was the glue that held all of the food chunks together. With a more modern system, it might not be a problem, but every time he saw a clog like that, he would bitch about people putting food into pipes meant for sewage…
We banned them when I worked for a public housing agency. They caused endless blockage problems for the maintenance staff, so we quit having them installed and jerked out the ones that had already been put in.
[QUOTE=DougC - And it smells gross too, many days. Mildew or whatever growing in it, that there doesn’t seem to be any way to clean out. If I was building a house I’d probably not put one in.
~[/QUOTE]
There shouldn’t be any odor coming out of your disposer. You can use citrus rinds or those “Plunk” disposer “pills”. They are what appear to be like a bath bead but filled with citrus oils.
Also, try cleaning the underside of the rubber splash guard in the sink. Food particles will collect on the underside of it and, er, putresce causing odors.
If none of that works, take it out and either replace it or just re-plumb the sink without one.
Thanks for your informative replies everyone!
I just have to comment on one thing that surprised me … enipla’s comment that all the waste goes to the same place. In OZ, it’s my understanding that this is not true … that there are two waste water systems, a “brown” water system (toilets) and a “grey” water one. This is based on my experience working with hydrologists a number of years back, some of whom were working on ways to recycle “grey” water (which is something that really requires the exclusion of feces!), and also the fact that when my sewers got clogged a few weeks back, both toilets were affected, but none of the sinks. Any experts care to comment on that?
I can see one feature of these things that would make them fairly unsuitable for many parts of Australia (can’t speak for Queensland, which I understand is fairly wet…) - the requirement to run lots of water down it. We’ve been on water restrictions in Victoria for a number of years continuously now, and I think anything that increased domestic water consumption would be very much frowned upon.
Anyway, I doubt if I will be shelling out for one in the near future … I compost too, and we produce so little rubbish that we routiniely forget to take out the bin for weeks at a time!
It probably derived from a time when virtually all our waste was just dust or ash from our open coal fires. When I was a nipper we didn’t have so much disposable wrapping packaging etc. to get rid of. Just ash/dust. Our food remains were kept separate and once a week a man with a horse and cart and a large bin would collect it. We called it Pig Swill and it was fed to the pigs (surprise, surprise). We used uncooked vegetable matter in our compost heaps though. I’m talking about the late 40s/early 50s but it obviously started well before then
Nothing unusual there: in less-pleasant climates than Oz, even the ash from the fire had a use, outside of cities and towns - it was scattered onto paths across gardens, yards etc., and over time formed into a hardened surface.
I imagine our member Spoons would object quite forcefully to being forced through a garburator. I know I would.
Re: separating blackwater (“septic” water containing human waste) and greywater (water containing other organic waste)…
Here in the damp many-laked climate of Ontario, there are still some places that don’t even separate stormwater from blackwater in the sewer system. Separately-handling greywater is still considered cutting-edge design, and I know of no large-scale developments that do it. Most greywater and blackwater go together to municipal treatment plants and local septic fields.
On the other hand, I have friends who live in an isolated location, who have a composting toilet and a greywater-recycling system. They are out in the country and have NO leach field.
The greywater-recycling system takes the used water from sinks and showers and irrigates planters along the south wall of the house. Assorted plants grow strong and vigourously in the planters… it looks like a bloody jungle and I keep expecting Tarzan to swing past on a vine. Apparently greywater is just dandy for fertilising houseplants.
Chickens do an excellent job of taking all types of food garbage and turning it into fertilizer.
In some cases, it is more environmentally sound to put food down the disposal than to put it in the trash. To help convince you and earlyout, here is why… Sanitary sewage goes to a typical treatment plant. First thing that happens is that all the big chunks are caught on screens, ground up and re-injected into the flow. Yes, everything. Large food globs, flushed barbie dolls, toilet paper, everything. Mighty tough grinders make small pieces of everything. (Some places may take the items that catch on the screens and landfill them, but not all. As in any large engineering project, it all depends on the designers, local cost to landfill waste, regulations at the time the plant was built, land available, etc.)
The sewage then goes through several different biologcal processes to degrade the solid organics, eat up the ammonia, and settle out all the resulting sludge. The clear water then flows to the stream/river/ocean/golf course watering system. The settled sludge is landfilled OR land applied as fertilizer. If your sludge is landfilled, then you wasted time and energy to send the food through the treatment plant. But if your sludge is land applied, a garbage disposal puts your leftover ham sandwich back into the cycle of nature instead of letting it get petrified in a landfill. All in all, not a huge impact to the environment one way or the other.
As for the ability of the sewer system to handle the waste… once again, case by case basis. The actual cost to handle the sewage is minor compared to the capital cost of the plant, so if the plant is already sized for everyone using a garbage disposal, you may as well use it. If you live in a town that just put in a brand new sewage treatment plant, that plant is sized the about 50% more load that it currently sees, planning for future city load growth (assuming your town leaders have any sense.) So in thise case, you have no need to feel guilty about sending a turkey dinner down the drain (but hold the gravy, as noted, fat does cause clogs even in large lines.)
If your town is using a 20-40 year old plant that has reached it’s limit, your washed down peas may be just the added load that overwhelms the system. Then your area must install a new plant, and your sewage rates go up. Or they ban disposals to try to lower the load. Then all your neighbors go on a witchhunt looking for the moron who flushed those peas.
And for Jurph, the food washed down is no worse or better than the organics that enter the sewage the old fasioned way. Treatment plants handle them just fine, if they are large enough. It’s just that you have no choice but to sewer yesterday’s enchiladas once you have chewed and swallowed them. But you do have a choice with last week’s meatloaf that is turning green in the back of the fridge.
Certainly not true in much of the USA.
Many older citys have only a single wastewater system, with everything (septic from buildings, and stormwater washed from streets) all going together to a sewage treatment plant. When there is a real big rainstorm, the incoming water exceeds the plant’s capacity, so excess water (both stormwater & raw sewage) overflows into the river without any treatment. Also, the stormwater is already much cleaner than sewage, but they both get the same treatment, which costs more money.
So most of these cities are working on separation projects, to provide 2 wastewater paths, one for sewage and one for stormwater. But this is a big project, involving digging up streets to get at 100-year old giant pipes, disconnecting & reconnecting all the building lines, every street gutter drain, etc. And a lot of expense for a city, with no immediate payback.
Newer cities will have the 2 wastewater paths already. (But note that many ‘newer’ cities are really suburbs of older cities, using their water treatment plant, and so they were built to match with the older city.)
You’re talking about a 3rd wastewater path, a greenwater one for stormwater runoff, and seperating the sewage one into greywater and brownwater/blackwater paths. The advantage would be that greywater would require much less treatment to clean it up. The disadvantage would be the requirement for 3 separate waste lines from each house, 3 separate city sewer lines under every street, etc.
It might be worthwhile in new construction (maybe), but probably not in any existing city, where you’d have to tear up streets, etc. to install the 3rd line. (In some cities, you’d be hard pressed to even find the room for a 3rd sewer line under their streets!) Plus you’d have to worry about the consequences of any accidental cross-connection in the system. Given all the plumbers around, there must be a certain number of incompetant ones. How long would it be before one of them connects the drains from a house wrong? (How many of you have encountered a house where the hot & cold water are plumbed to the wrong sides on some fixture?)
True. Separation of “greywater” is almost unheard of in the United States. I think there are some places in the desert that do it, and use the greywater on lawns and gardens, but that’s about it.
Where I grew up, it was only about 5 or 10 years ago that they seperated the storm sewers from the sanitary sewers. It involved digging up pretty much every street in the city, a few streets at a time. When they did our street, there was about a three-month period where we couldn’t use our driveway, and had to park our cars a block or two over. It was quite a hassle.
Around here, some cities have storm drains that feed directly into a local river, without any tereatment. These drains have a picture of a fish stenciled onto the pavement next to them, and a warning not to dump things down the drain.
I clean mine every so often by dumping a half-cup or so of baking soda in, adding a half-cup of vinegar, adding some lemon or orange peels and then rinsing thoroughly.
It never smells.
What’s that called…olfactory something? Your smeller gets used to odors so you no longer smell tham.
A lot of people who have cats will tell you that the litter box doean’t stink.
Riiight. :dubious:
And your friends are too kind to tell you the truth.
Anyway, some people around here seperate grey water and use it for flushing, etc. There’s some controversy about irrigating with it.
I once stuffed the remains of a Thanksgiving turkey (bones and all) through there.
It worked, but prob not a good idea.
I’ve been within hearing distance of a Rolex going through one.
Funnier to me than to the respective owners of both the Rolex and the disposal. Believe that one was a draw.
Part of the idea of separating greywater is to use it locally: for watering plants or flusing toilets or whatevoer, on the property. I think that is both much more likely and much easier to implement than any sort of separate citywide centralised greywater collection system–although I could certainly see separate greywater systems in apartment buildings.
If you save greywater and flush toilets with it, you reduce the amount of fresh water used, and it ends up in the blackwater system anyways. If you use it for irrigation, through suitable filtering systems and planters, it eventually replenishes the groundwater in the area,
Both these uses reduce the total colume of blackwater leaving the proprty.
I have heard that some wastewater systems require a certain total volume of throughput to work properly, and when people start conserving water, the sewers clog because of insufficient flow or too much solids…
Our present home has a sewage lift system for we live on a lake. It consist of an underground tank and lift pump that comes on and off controlled from level switches. If any system could have a problem from a garbage disposal it would be this system. We have lived here for 11 years… never a minutes problem!
Which was louder, the sound of the Rolex going through the disposal or the owner of the Rolex after deducing the source of the sound of the Rolex going through the disposal?
There’s something cosmic about that.