The house we own now came with a garbage disposal. Before that I had never given them a second thought. But now that I have one, I love it. I love not having to stick my hand into the mucky sink to remove food scraps. My spoons don’t love it quite as much, poor battered things.

One time we had our plumber at the house doing work and he had said that most of his emergency calls were because of clogged garbage disposals. He also said that potato peels were funding his son’s college education. With the amount of money he was charging per hour, I doubt he was joking either.

Until recently I did not realize that disposals were not considered environmentally friendly.

According to Grinning Planet, using a garbage disposal taxes the sewage treatment facilities.

This past month the town of Raleigh, NC banned the installation of new garbage disposals. Citing sewer overflows caused by people pouring grease down their drains. I am not really sure what will prevent the people from pouring grease down their drains without a disposal.

I wonder if people think of disposals as trash compactor instead of just using it for the small random scraps that are left in the sink. You aren’t supposed to dump containers of food into the sink and let the disposal have at it.

A much better way to get rid of food products is with a compost pile. We have one, though I willingly admit that in the frigid winter weather I do not use it. But I don’t shove the food scraps down the disposal either.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 8:26 pm and is filed under green design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.