Is this becoming culturally aware?

[gemfyre]

Okay, you peeps in the U.S. Tell me about garbage disposals. How do they work? Why do you have them? We don't have them in Australia, we just chuck stuff in the bin.

From what I can gather it's attached to the sink? But you throw rubbish in there? I'm not quite getting it.

Explain!

Comments

[stefanina.livejournal.com]

Most that I've worked with have a grinder unit attached to the outgoing drain. It grinds the food trash very fine so it can go down the drain into water reclamation. That's why you should only put vegetable trash in a garbage disposal.

[morningglorymlp.livejournal.com]

For the ones I've had, I've only used them when there are bits of scrap food that I miss removing from dishes. For example, if I had some dried on spaghetti, or a chunk of tomato. It's not something you want to send a lot of material through because they tend to clog up easily. Or, that's been my experience.

[lilblueunicorn.livejournal.com]

Garbage disposals are sort of... optional. I don't know of anyone that has one (I live in the American Southeast) but from what I understand, it's like... a grinder. If you accidentally let an entire potato go down the sink (or pasta, or what have you) instead of stopping it up it goes into this grinder type thing and is ground up finely and then washed down the drain... or maybe it just collects in a separate little trap type thing. I'm not quite sure.

Anyway, we've never had one. We need one, but have never had one.

[kitfoxx.livejournal.com]

What they said.

It's like a blender just below the outgoing hole in the bottom of the sink. Some people jam all kinds of food-debris in there. I personally don't use mine very often, but sometimes if a lot of debris is going down the drain from rinsing plates off or preparing dinner (say, you peel a carrot over the sink), then I'll run the disposal. There's typically a switch on the wall that looks like a light switch that you turn it on with, and you want to run water while your run the disposal to rinse the now-finely-chopped-bits down the drain and through the pipes. Personally, I compost as much as I possibly can.

[stefanina.livejournal.com]

Yep, same here. Where I see garbage disposals a lot in in apartment buldings, condos, townhouses and other places where composting really isn't an option. Getting ground up in the garbage disposal and flushed into reclamation means the food waste eventually goes out into a city drain field to be reabsorbed into the environment...

[khiseer.livejournal.com]

hey hun, i have seen heaps of houses with garbage disposals here.. it's not common but there are quite a few around. :P

[glittery-girl.livejournal.com]

I've seen one here, they smell and are bad for the environment!