Me too. I have been considering that digression.
Yeah. I don’t need to wash the dishes before they go in the dishwasher but I: scrape the bulk for composting (village industrial scale, all food waste is fine); rinse off anything that might dry on before I run it (won’t until I have a fullish load); and that rinsed debris goes down through the garbage disposal.
The house I lived in in Montreal had a garbage disposal. That was in the 70s.
This is absolutely key! I’ve been flushing various little bits of stuff down the kitchen drain for years with no problem whatsoever. This is what motivated me to very foolishly pour an entire jar of pasta sauce with mushroom and sausage bits down the sink, resulting in the famous episode of my life featuring Ukrainian plumbers and vast expense. There was, in fact, nothing in the sauce that had not been safely flushed down the kitchen drain before, the problem was that there was so much of it all at once! And the blockage it caused wasn’t just minor, but a major issue through the whole downstream drainage system!
Now I’m super-paranoid about even small particulates going down the kitchen drain. Out of an abundance of paranoia caution, I throw away many food containers that I would normally have rinsed and put in recycling. Or else I’ll wipe them down with a paper towel to get rid of all solid particulates before I rinse them.
My experience suggests that it doesn’t work that way. As per the above, something like a complete basket of grounds might clog your drain immediately (and require Ukrainian plumbers) but I believe that small amounts of solids simply wash away, so the 5% residual set of grounds will clog your drain in the timeframe of → probably never!
I’m not sure why pasta sauce would cause a clog.
Two things to watch for -
Pouring grease or greasy stuff down a drain is a serious no-no. At a certain point, the pipes are cool enough it congeals (especailly in a big aparment building), and begins to constrict the pipes and create a build-up. I assume this is what happened with pasta sauce, although keep in mind cheese would be even worse than hot grease. From what I’ve read, once it hardens, hot water is unlikely to loosen it off again. Plus, where there’s an elbow in the pipe, the flow lessesns and stuff will build up.
Starch, or anything that turns to paste, then likely will do the same - start to settle on the walls of the pipe and then eventually harden there. (MY come-to-plumber experience was too many potato peels. Now they go in the trash. This post is my gospel according to the plumber.). I assume this applies to too many eggshells too - you can get a nice calcium layer buildup.
Another serious problem is not running the water long enough. You want to seriously flush whatever there is down the pipes, or it may stick and create buildup.
The obvious is - no fibrous materals - celery, banana peels, corn husks… This will simply clog up the gizmo on the garburetor itself, or else create cotton balls of fiber to also start blocking the pipes.
The garburetor is for easy displosal of those last little bits on the plate once you’ve scrapped the larger parts into the garbase, or poured the crease into a container to put in the freezer until it’s solid, then it goes in the garbage.
Because of the bits of mushroom and sausage in it. The analogy I would draw is with traffic flow on an expressway. Up to a certain level of traffic, cars just keep whizzing down the road with no problem. But at some point, throughput capacity is exceeded and traffic drastically slows down or even stops. With traffic, the congestion eventually clears up, but with drains, this can create nucleation points around which subsequent solids that would otherwise flush away start to collect and form a mass that jams up the drainpipe. In my case, this happened at multiple locations all along the drainpipe. Most of that section of drainpipe in the basement had to be disassembled, cleaned out, and put back together again.
I kind of want to know this story.
We don’t have these things in this country, but we do have catfish. I’ve never tried to eat or even prepare one. But other fish debris goes straight into the outside bin.
Aside from grease, most of the problems described herein are due to cheaper contractor-grade disposers that probably came with the house. They are underpowered, with 1/3hp motors, cost under $100 and can’t deal with fibrous material. A good quality disposer with a more powerful 1hp+ motor will cost around $200+, and will handle just about any food waste you can push down its gullet. Except grease.
The point of a garburetor is it “thagomizes” stuff to tiny bits, a fine paste, so you don’t get lumps going down the drain.
Of course. In case I wasn’t clear, I don’t have one. My expectation was that the bits would be small enough to wash away down the drain. I was tragically wrong, mainly because there was so much of it that the bits massed together into big blockages.
We don’t have sink disposals in Ireland at all. I don’t know why. Or else I don’t know why you do have them in America. I’m not sure which question is pertinent.
It does mean that I never have to confront the question of what solid items I can/should dispose of down the kitchen drain. I don’t attempt to put any solid items down the kitchen drain.
Great question, so I looked it up. Here in America, about 50% of households have one. They can also be found, although not terribly common, in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. But they are uncommon elsewhere, due to septic and plumbing systems that can’t handle that sort of waste.
At least, according to this:
I’m pretty sure that plumbing systems in Canada are up to the same standards as in the US. But although garburetors exist here, in my experience they’re not very common, though the reason for that isn’t clear.
There seems to be a tendency to blame plumbing systems on things that have nothing to do with the plumbing. There were stories during the Sochi Olympics about visitors being cautioned not to flush toilet paper down the toilet, but to deposit it in a provided wastebasket instead. My suspicion is that this has more to do with the crappy (no pun intended) quality of Russian toilet paper than with the plumbing. The toilet paper we’re used to is not only soft but designed to readily disintegrate in water. This is less true for Kleenex and (especially) paper towel, hence why we shouldn’t flush those. I suspect Russian toilet paper is in that category.
For our use case it isn’t a choice between compost or disposal. I scrape the big crud for composting. And the remaining crud gets rinsed off before in the dishwasher. That crud, and peel or two when prepping that I don’t grab, and the French Press grinds that don’t come with few good shakes, gets pulverized before going downstream. I think it is less risky for it to be pulverized than not. And marginally less hassle than a sink strainer basket.
Clogs from my wife’s hair in the bathroom sink are enough for me. Maybe bathroom sink and tub disposals would have a market niche!
I use my garbage disposal for vegetable peelings. Excellent for potatoes, carrots, tops of strawberries, and cantaloupe.
Never had any problems.
Same, I compost almost everything, but I’m not going to spend hours on every grain of coffee grounds. And using a paper towel or something seems counterproductive if your goal is reducing waste.
Hair would just wrap around anything spinning and jam it up. You can get a strainer (SinkShroom or the like) which work well for catching hair, though can be gross to clean. But less gross to deal with a small amount weekly rather than a wet slimy hair glob with a snake.
An aside, most of the world you should not flush TP, or at least it’s questionable, likely due to plumbing infrastructure:
I have long assumed the local prohibitions on flushing TP in many countries were more a matter of the design of the sewage treatment infrastructure than the pipes in the building and under the streets. But that’s an assumption, not certain knowledge.
Many things:
- Pipes are different diameter, or less maintained materials (cast iron or clay instead of PVC/ABS)
- Different method of sewage treatment at the plant
- Connections are different, e.g. straight connections rather than a Y/wye. Code in the US also has venting requirements, I can’t comment on how standardized this is in every red place.
- On septic/leach/cesspit-cesspool and it will clog or they don’t have the resources to pump it as often. Also a potential problem in the green countries. Don’t flush “flushable wipes” ever!
- TP type: the crappy single ply that cheap businesses use can be better for a system actually, even if it isn’t comfortable for humans. If you put some sheets in the bowl and it quickly disintegrates into tiny scraps it will go through a lot easier than 2/3-ply.
Flushing stuff on your vacation might not be a problem either, but if every guest does this it can become one.
I always assumed it was because standard north American toilet paper is not the norm in many other countries for their poorer folk. When people are prone to use whatever is at hand, rather than purpose-made paper, it could cause problems. I would not recommend North Americans flushing pages from the Sears catalog down the drain. Or newspaper. Or even nose tissues in large quantities. Actual modern toilet paper has a design to turn to mush and fall apart in water. I saw the toilet paper basket thing in some places in China, but not in any European country I visited. Can’t say for Egypt, I assume because the four-star hotels have modern toilet paper, not a problem.
(Although I did see a thread where several people complained - don’t use Costco toilet paper in septic tank systems, it doesn’t disintegrate. )