Why garbage disposal

Learn More. Real estate has long been the go-to investment for those looking to build long-term wealth for generations. Let us help you navigate this asset class by signing up for our comprehensive real estate investing guide. If you're used to cooking for a large family, you're no doubt familiar with the post-dinner mess: crumbs on the floor, spills on the table, and a pile of dishes with gunky, caked-on food scraps monopolizing your sink. If only it were safe to just wash those food remnants down the drain without having to worry about clogs.

Thankfully, it is if you install a garbage disposal. A garbage disposal is a device that's mounted to the underside of your sink and grinds food matter into small-enough pieces that they can safely fit down the drain.

While some types of food scraps and liquids, like chicken bones or oils, should not be poured into a garbage disposal, softer foods like cooked meats and vegetables can be ground up easily. But you might pay more or less, depending on the unit you choose. The main advantage of a garbage disposal is that it makes cleanup after meals easier.

Rather than have to move plates from your sink to your trash can to scrape off food waste, you can generally just dump everything down the drain, grind it up, and call it day, all without damaging your pipes.

Furthermore, having a garbage disposal limits the amount of food waste that needs to sit in your trash can. That could result in fewer problems with pests , not to mention help you avoid unpleasant odors that can accumulate. Like most household appliances , garbage disposals can break if you don't maintain them properly. This also can lead to waste of water. Essentially, disposals are not designed to handle all kind of food scraps. This is why it is important to be conscious of what goes into the unit.

The stringy and fibrous food has a way of wrapping around the blades and preventing it from turning properly, thus resulting in a jammed unit. Meat and other hard products will eventually dull the blade making it difficult for the unit to properly cut through food scraps causing the clogging.

Starchy food on the other hand is known to expand especially when subjected to hot water. This can cause it to tightly pack the drain pipe of the disposal causing it to clog and eventually leak. Repairs can be costly depending on the damage. As they say, one person's trash is another person's treasure. My comments stray from the disposal issue but seemed a good opportunity to point out useless demo of things that could be reused.

Currently, in my neighborhood, I hear plumbers and remodel contractors say no to disposals and to go green. There are many people in my area who say they are not using them. We are constantly reminded to conserve water and to recycle and more and more of my friends say they are not using theirs other than randomly and will not replace them when they give out.

We installed a large sink and it is not a divided sink so only one drain hole. I keep a removable strainer over the hole primarily to keep non food objects from going down the drain and try to combine the use of the disposal with "going green". I fix everything myself and never watch those shows. I wouldn't want a disposal even if it were free and lasted years. I have way more space under the sink and no maintenance issues.

Once I learned how to use one appropriately, I never had any problems. Fibrous vegetable scraps and copious amounts of peels don't go down my drain nor do I pour down huge amounts of grease that accumulate if I roast a chicken.

In fact it is more of an issue of clogging without a disposal because I don't like washing the scraps and other small debris down a NON-garbage disposal drain. I have not had a garbage disposal on years. That rubber stuff seems kind of nasty and scary. I do have a compost bin though This was excellent to read!

Sealed the deal on not having a GD in my new house. I was worried about it cracking my farmhouse sink, but there are dozens more reasons to not have one. Ive always hated thinking about all the nasty gunk lerking in that drain. I like things that I can clean, and that is one place that really cant be cleaned! Neither my husband or myself hardly use it, so I wont miss it. I haven't had one for years. You also should not have one if you are on septic.

No disposal in new house. Neighbors think I'm crazy. Not very hard to scrape plates into garbage and take garbage bag to outside trash daily. No special rules about what to put into garbage bag. How about apple peelings? So no to potato and yes to apple? More trouble than it's worth.

Thanks for a great read. Learned from my wife of what not to put down the GD and instead of trying to remember, I just don't put anything down the GD. Using a metal strainer is so much better and is easy to clean. With this new learned method we will not be putting in a GD when we change our kitchen sink, mostly because our new sink is deeper and will take up more valuable space underneath. I've been in my new house for over a year now, and do not miss the GD one bit!

My builder tried numerous times to talk me into it, but I stood my ground. Everything goes into the compost bin anyway. The drain is always clean, no clogs, no disposal smell.

It's just so nice to finally have a kitchen without that nasty contraption!!! This must be an American thing, I only know what they are cos of movies and googling it just now.

Put food in the bin not down the drain and have something to catch any scraps in the sink hole. To me this seems like inventing something to fix a problem that never existed NASA making a fancy space pen and russians using a pencil. Elena Aye , space pens might seem like a frivolous invention, but in the US, at least, scientific documents, which NASA flight documents are, are always recorded in pen.

If an error was made, then the error was stuck-through, but not erased. This was true in the paper document era and still holds if paper is used.

Pencil is too easily erased. I'm watching a documentary about Apollo 11 at the moment. I feel so lucky that I was around to witness the space age. I have a Title 5 septic and garbage disposals are not allowed. I know a few people who have had one installed, but they have the system pumped every year, instead of every two years. Should they sell, the disposal has to be removed before the house is listed. Over the years, I have learned to live without one.

What with all the recycle regulations, it is just another step to take before going to the dump. And, a disposal is just one more thing to clean…. I have now lived in my home for one and a half years, and I do not miss having a garbage disposal. I am so happy I don't have that stinky, germy, impossible to clean invention in my home. Absolutely no need for it!

So food scraps going down the drain become part of what needs to be treated, for which there is only so much capacity. Nutrients washed from land to sea by rain runoff is of course a necessary part of ocean ecosystems.

But too much extra, i. So that is a good enough reason not to put food down the drain here. I'm remodeling a kitchen in a house now which will be sold and have decided against putting in a garburator, yet did place an outlet under the sink for future install as a compromise. A few years ago I had my kitchen redone and my very experienced and wonderful kitchen designer never brought up the issue of a garbage disposal.

I find tenants put everything they can down the drains, and motors have been burned up by chicken bones and shrimp shells. One of those is a highrise condo where every unit has a GD. Several times per year there are kitchen sink backups, caused by food going down the drain in combo with grease. I have a friend who had to get the top of the line model that vaporizes chicken bones. We have a small 3 gallon bin that still takes days to fill up so it never smells. We tie the bags closed before we throw them out.

Our trash is picked up weekly, and our can sits right outside the kitchen under the window, we never have smell problems. I do, however, sometimes clean the inside of the disposal and its nasty black slime all around the underside of the collar, stinky slimy flange, just disgusting.

Looking forward to never doing yhat again. We would rather have better habits than gadgets that enable and sometimes encourage bad ones. What an interesting thread. I've had garbage disposals in the past and used them but I have gotten away from the in the past dozen years. In my last rental home, shortly after I moved in, I was opening a small can of cat food when apparently unnoticed I dropped the pull-back lid in it and later turned it on.

After that I really stopped using it. In my home I bought in December , I have one but I am not sure it even works. There is a switch by the sink and I've tried it with no results so it probably is a dead disposal. It doesn't matter; I simply scrape everything in to the garbage bin. Don't miss it at all.

I use Plink every so often to keep it extra clean. Always turn on the cold water before starting the disposal, then let it run as the disposal runs. Gradually feed in small amounts of food debris.

When you finish, turn off the disposal and let the water run for another 10 to 20 seconds to flush food particles through the disposal and down the pipes. Even when you use the garbage disposal correctly, some food particles can end up lingering inside. These particles then decay and can eventually start to smell.

To prevent this, once a week, turn off power to the disposal and clean it. Then use a bottle brush to scrub out the inside of the disposal.