I live in a hi-rise and they just put a note under my door of things not to put in a sink disposal (which every apartment here has).
On the list is egg shells, rice/pasta, bones, coffee grounds, batter/dough, fat/oil/grease and fruit peels.
So, if I have a sink disposal what can I use it for?
Small bits like scrapings from your plate. Despite the name it’s not meant for large chunks of food as an alternative to the actual garbage or compost. Always run water down the same drain while you run it.
Grease and highly fibrous things (such as artichoke leaves) are the worst. Management is being perhaps a little conservative on what you can put in, but I can understand as some people think it’s for more things than it should be.
Eggshells aren’t greasy or fibrous. Coffee grounds are already ground. Those sound like the best suited substances for it. I cannot understand the proscription of them.
Years ago I was visiting someone housesitting in a friend’s apartment. For some unknown reason, she decided to get rid of a bunch of cabbage by putting the leaves down the disposal. That was the day I taught myself how to take apart a disposal and unwind cabbage fibers from the grinding assembly.
I know from experience that catfish heads don’t work.
Nothing. Don’t “put” anything thru it. Have a strainer over the drain and anything small enough to get thru that (e.g. bits from your plate) can be safely run thru the disposal and flushed down your drain by running a bunch of water after it. But anything caught in the strainer should be composted or trashed. Never intentionally stuff anything down there, and never put grease or fat down there, either.
The issue with egg shells (and coffee grounds), I think, is that they’re more likely to get stuck in the plumbing after the leave the disposal.
It’s also going to depend on your specific model. I have an ISE Evolution, I’ve put the entire top of a pineapple down it. This was the picture on the box, I had to try it.
It is my understanding that they stick to the pipes and cause other things to collect which leads to blockages. Additionally, they don’t break down, so won’t melt away with some running water, but may remain stuck anywhere they get lodged.
The answer to what should go down the disposal is “almost nothing”. Ice cubes and citrus peels are good things to put in a disposal.
ETA: Re: coffee grounds and eggshells. Quantity does matter. If a few coffee grounds end up in the bottom of cup I wash them down the drain, and don’t worry about it. Similar, if an fleck of shell gets in my omelette, I’ll just rinse off the plate in the sink. I will not dump all the grounds from a French press down the drain, or throw whole egg shells in the sink.
FWIW I have an unusually powerful sink disposal (as these things go). Does that matter? One horsepower or 100 does it make a difference (made up numbers…mine is certainly nowhere near 100 HP…more like 1.5HP…100 would be beyond silly).
This is a good answer. We use our disposal sparingly.
I have learned the hard way not to put apple corps in the disposal.
Yes, it will do a better job with hard things like bones. I still would avoid fibrous things like potato peels, or the mentioned cabbage. Those might be ripped into small enough pieces to go out the drain, but are likely to cause a clog downstream.
Soft but tough things might be a problem, too. I’ve seen (and smelled) stuff like hunks of meat or grizzle just get bounced around and never ground up small enough to get flushed out. Then they rot in the disposal.
If you aren’t getting clogs (and your neighbors aren’t getting clogs) and it doesn’t stink, then you’re probably fine with past behavior. If you keep having trouble, then change your behavior.
My mother-in-law insists on putting vegetable peels in her disposal. Then it clogs, and I come and clean out the drain pipe. Instead of learning to not put vegetable peels in the disposal, she learned how to clean out the drain pipe herself.
I had a garbage disposal in my apartment, and never intentionally used it. It always kept clogging anyway, and then burning out so it wouldn’t run at all, and making the clogs that much worse.
The last time the apartment maintenance guy responded to it, he just removed the entire thing and left me with a plain drain pipe. It works so much better now.
This is a different question to the OP but I think related:
How is it your poop gets through pipes fine but coffee grounds might be a problem?
Unless you have a commercial insinkerator that is designed to grind and shred food stuffs and jet them away with hi volume streams of water put nothing other than the bits remaining on your dishes after scraping them into the garbage.
Solids will embed with grease, clogging the system.
Your poop is soft and can dissolve in water, so it breaks down in water to make disgusting water. Coffee grounds are hard, and after they turn water into coffee, you still have hard things left.
Sewage treatment plants don’t have poop logs floating around, just disgusting water. However, they may have a clog of coffee grounds. Coffee grounds will compost and break down, but not in the time it takes to travel to the treatment plant.
Septic system in my yard.
Always thought I needed, like really needed a disposal.
Alas, not to be.
My experience with one was as a child, so early-ish model.
We had a sign my Daddy put over the sink “If you put anything other than your head down there, I will find out!”
Yeah, no. It was a complete failure in our kitchen.
Look at the size of the pipe under your sink, then the size of the pipe that the toilet empties into.
I am not a plumber. Are the pipes bigger? (I really do not know)
Yes. Much bigger.
ISTM that a disposal is worthless. Am I missing something?