When I was growing up, these seemed to be ubiquitous and I never liked them. They seemed overcomplicated for the purpose, and created a gross and smelly area under the sink that needed more cleaning.
I haven’t had one in years, as a simple sink mesh does the same job. But I don’t really know how other people are. Are under sink garbage disposals still common, and commonly actually used by people here?
They were never a thing in Europe.
The sewage treatment is not built to handle that kind of stuff. The sewage pipes aren’t too happy about it, either. I might flush some carbs down the toilet. The poop-munching bacteria at the treatment plant get a nice growth boost from it. Grease not only clogs your own pipes, but causes issues for the whole city. I think it’s possible to get fined for it if you’d get caught starting a year or two back.
Food waste goes in the trash or compost. If it goes in the trash it’s burned at industrial temperatures to burn clean. The heat is used for district heating networks.
The sewage treatment is not built to handle that kind of stuff.
They’re also not built to handle it in the US, but lower standards solve that problem pretty handily
Yeah, grease and oil kills plumbing
They were never a thing in Europe.
Not really a thing in Canada either. Bought a reasonably midrange ($600k) brand-new apartment back in 2006, it didn’t come with it. Also have never seen it in any other house that I’ve visited, except for the wealthy. And by that, I mean in a house that you would normally pay $4-8 million for. Which is certainly upper middle class where I am, but not overly wealthy.
I use it all the time. Dump dishes into trash, rinse everything that sticks off in sink, grind up all the food bits from that in the disposal, put dishes in dish washer.
It’s only gonna get gross and smelly under your sink if something is wrong with the disposal. And if you’re not throwing a shit ton of garbage down it, just the little bits that wash off when doing dishes, it’s not likely to break or get clogged.
We have one, I like it. Never gross smelling, keeps the drains clear, seems to help the dishwasher run better.
They seem more common now if anything
I’m not sure what extra cleaning you’re talking about but if you use them once in a while they don’t stink
Lol what? They are ubiquitous as ever.
I found a solid metal strainer, not mesh for my sink. Holds up forever and much easier to clean. Even if you have a disposal, its not great to just dump everything down the drain [citation needed]. You especially want to catch things like small bones and forks.
The disposals seem common enough, a lot older/outdated homes don’t have them. I have no idea what they’re putting into new houses and renovations.
Never had an under the sink mess like you describe, maybe yours just had a small leak?
Pretty sure they just mean that it can get stinky in there
Most garbage disposals just cause more trouble that they’re worth since they turn small chunks of food into paste and that’s more likely to stick to the insides of drains and cause more clogs than the small chunks, as long as your drains are properly maintained. And a halfway decent strainer will keep out the larger pieces. It’s also not good for your city drains and makes sewage processing more expensive. Better to use composting for your food scraps if you can.
I compost (and save stuff for broth) and we have a sink disposal. It’s for the little bits of cooked food left on plates, are you composting those? The sink that has one is the least cloggy kitchen sink I’ve ever had, and as far as I understand they are pretty neutral in terms of waste stream.
Grease I agree shouldn’t go in there, that goes in the trash.
I worked in apartment maintenance for a bit. That is a requirement for low income housing, at least in California. If it doesn’t have one or it stops working for any reason, the tenant can claim unlivable living conditions and not pay rent until it’s fixed. This is true for many types of problems but you asked about garbage disposals. Also the property could potentially lose the designation of low income housing which means losing the federal/state subsidy. Most tenants don’t know about this and choose to move out instead after a few rent increases. On the other hand there is a list of “problem tenants” that landlords share and if you end up on it then good luck finding a new place to rent.
I find they’re pretty ubiquitous where I’m from. I had one in every apartment I’ve lived in. I don’t have one in my house though.
I know a lot of people will just dump a lot of food waste in there. After struggling with it, I started just throwing out all of the waste and using the garbage disposal for the small bits of food that would normally get caught in the sink strainer.
Now that I’m back to living in a place with no garbage disposal, I do miss it a little. The sink strainer is a bit gross to handle. But it’s also pretty nice not having to maintain the garbage disposal so it all evens out.
What maintenance? I had to fish broken glass out of mine once, but otherwise I’ve never had to mess with it.
Very small things, but still things I needed to remember to do. Running it every day. Making sure to clean it every week. (Ice or garbage disposal cleaner) If I didn’t clean it, even after running it every day, it would smell. When my partner would clog it, I would have to fix it. (Again, it took little time.) Making sure nothing fell in there before I ran it every time. I would often find my measuring spoons or a fork in there. (It doesn’t really seem to matter to my family how many times I tell them not to leave small things in the sink.)
I recognize this is very little and it’s basically nothing for most people, but sometimes I have a very hard time keeping up with things and the garbage disposal is very out of sight, out of mind. The sink strainer is very visible.
I had one in most of the apartments I lived in, but I was always having problems with them and needing to contact the landlord to fix it (some of this was my fault but still). Now that I have my own place I’m not going to install one, I don’t want to spend money if the result is mostly to get to maintain yet another thing, just to avoid shaking a drain trap over the trash every once in a while.
My condo has one. I use it.
I have never not had one
I had one once, here in Australia, in a house my family lived in for a few years. It was novelty as I’d never seen one before or since.I seem to recall thinking it was very useful but for some reason, even though there’s really no chance of it happening, I always had like intrusive thoughts of sticking my fingers in there. Also my grandpa stayed with us for a little while and he kept throwing nectarine cores in there which it really couldn’t handle even though we asked him not to. It also used to make a deafening noise like the awakening of Cthulhu at rhe best of times, hearing it sound like it was about to spectacularly break was really distressing. I don’t know how legal it was to have that thing, they just don’t seem to exist here in Australia so it was very odd that this place had it.
I grew up with and around them but they’re generally not a thing here in Japan. I’m trying to compost all my organics and such anyway and most things can go into compost.
They shouldn’t make a gross smelly area under your sink. It sounds like yours was leaking.
Or had a backflow issue
