Garbage Disposals???

[7rider]

My dad one time tried to put lobster shells down my garbage disposal! Boy, did that NOT work! And he was a plumber!!! On the positive side, tho', he made sure I was well supplied with tools when I bought my townhouse...and he knew how to put them to use to repair the damage!!

I have a friend who works for the public works department in her town, and rails incessantly against garbage disposals. She says most sewage treatment facilities are optimized to treat human waste and not kitchen scraps.

Except for the occasional egg shells (which, this time of year, are best dried, crushed, and added to your bird seed to supplement the calcium for egg-laying wild birds), nothing really goes down our disposals except "mistakes". Stinky trash - chicken bones, fat/gristle - goes in a baggie in the freezer until trash day. Spent oil, liquid fats, go in an empty jar or can under the sink and discarded when full. I wish I could say I was a better composter. Bunny poo (which is GREAT for the garden) and old hay gets composted, but not much else sadly.

[Eden]

It doesn't sound like you put anything bad in it, just be sure to feed it slowly and run water while you do it and everything should be fine.

there are a few things which I will never (again ) put down my disposal..... the green ends of leeks are bad, bad, bad, as is even a small quantity of seaweed (I use sheets in broth for miso soup), but I can plug it up even with safe stuff if I try to feed it too fast. Onion and shallot type skins will really only grind up if something else goes in with them and dense things like potato peelings have to go in quite slowly.

[divingbiker]

About 10 years ago, when my kitchen sink was clogged, a plumber told me not to run vegetables through the disposal. Since I'm a vegetarian, that's pretty much all I ever put in it, and I thought what the hell good is it if you can't put vegetables in it.

But since then, I only put soft things like soup and cooked vegetables in the disposal, and I've not had another clog. Any raw vegetable scraps go in the trash. Can't compost because there are too many rats around.

[snapdragen]

I've had bad luck putting onion skins (or shallot skins) down the disposal. Our last plug was two Christmas Eves ago - big fun in the snap house, washing dishes in the laundry tub.

[Trek420]

egg shells (which, this time of year, are best dried, crushed, and added to your bird seed to supplement the calcium for egg-laying wild birds)=

This is cool, what a great idea!

[anakiwa]

Except for the occasional egg shells (which, this time of year, are best dried, crushed, and added to your bird seed to supplement the calcium for egg-laying wild birds

Definitely not a good idea around here- last summer some of my neighbors had some un-invited bear visits to their bird feeders (the bear could climb up an outside wall to the balcony, and returned a few weeks later to the same condo units, even after the bird seed had been removed).

I know I should compost- I don't have a garden, but I could dump the stuff out back pretty easily- hmmm.

Thanks for all the comments- in retrospect I suspect I tried to jam too much stuff down all at once.

[Deanna]

I've had bad luck with just about any type of vegetable skin (apple, carrot, onion). Shot glasses are a bad idea too. Otherwise, I've been able to put just about anything down mine. I even put in chicken bones--otherwise my garbage hound of a dog knocks over the garbage can and digs them out.

[tulip]

I know I should compost- I don't have a garden, but I could dump the stuff out back pretty easily- hmmm.

You live in Vermont and you don't compost??? I thought for sure that was a law up there

I luv my compost!

[madscot13]

+1 for composting my family keeps an old plastic ice cream bucket around. the plastic top helps keep odors a way and they are easy to rinse. see it even reuses old things. you can keep it in the second basin of the sink or below in another catch all tub.


hmm I've never worried about how birds get Calcium, I've been so worried about mu own.

[susiej]

Moderately off-topic (but, you know, hey), disposals and college students DO NOT MIX. My husband's second roommate never really learned to clean up after himself: he'd leave dishes all over the place, pans on the stove. One day the kitchen really stank. Husband took out the trash. Cleaned out the fridge. Did the dishes. Still stank. Moved the stand-alone cabinet to look for dead rodents (none). Finally, the disposal came to mind. I made him look. Sure enough: compost. We opened the window, turned the water on high, hit the disposal switch. Whew! What a smell! Thankfully, with the food gone, the smell left in minutes.

We figure the roommate had never used a disposal before, that his parents would notice the food down the sink and turn it on for him.