Do garburators put excess strain on waste management?

Corroded@leminal.space to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 41 points –

I feel in the suburbs where you have cookie cutter houses that all have garburators it must add a little bit of load. How does it compare to municipally run composting?

37

What’s a garburstor?

I assume it's a garbage disposal, I've never heard the term either though.

I hadn't heard the term either but wikipedia says you're correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_disposal_unit

So basically a macerator on your sink crushing garbage to go down the sewage pipe?

What an astonishingly terrible idea.

You're supposed to use it to annihilate leftover food matter stuck to your plate which was scrubbed off, not dispose of a body.

It's great if you don't abuse it, it's not intended for anything big. Little bits of stuff in the bottom of your sink? Rinse and turn the motor on.

I don't really have any faith at all in people's ability not to abuse things. Especially something like this that magically makes physical problems disappear.

I mean that's where the hand/chicken bones inside the garburator trope comes in with horror movies and sitcoms

Think of it as similar to composting. Food is broken up and has a chance to decompose, rather than be sealed forever in a landfill.

Or maybe think of it as similar to pooping. Semi-digested food goes down the drain and gets a chance to decompose or recycled to fertilizer

Y’all don’t have specific kitchen and/or garden waste bins? Over here we have one, along with a bin for non-recyclables and more and more often one for plastics.

Currently some of us can pay for a composting service, but everyone can use a dispos-all to “pre digest” food scraps and feed it down the drain. Also, composting as a service is fairly new, whereas dispos-alls have been around since before I was born. Granted we also composted for our own garden when I was a kid

Wait, it’s a separate service? For me it has always been part of the garbage collection tax. You get a couple of bins and a collection schedule. If you’re unlucky, you also pay per bin emptied depending on your municipality. It’s not really a choice not to have the service, as it is part of living in the municipality you live in. Fun to learn how things that are so normal to me can be so different in other places!

Every municipality is different so I’m sure there is no certain answer …

Mine has better service than anyone I know. It’s all covered by taxes (vs per bag fees in many places), and they’ll take pretty much anything. If it’s big or heavy, they prefer a call to send a flatbed, but they’ll take it. They’ll take recycling and Christmas trees and yardwaste, and will even vacuum up leaves in the fall. When everyone was transitioning away from CRT TVs, my town was one of very few to take it without a fee. They have hazardous waste drop off without a fee. They’re just really good….. but composting is an extra service I’d have to pay for

It would be breaking it up, chances are if you live in an urban area there is one on your block underground. Sewage is chopped up to make it flow easier and to speed up processing.

It's what we call them in Canada!

I'm Canadian and Ive never heard this term before. I don't think I've ever seen a house with a compactor either.

I knew this because of 'How I met your mother'!

Apparently it's a Canadian term

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/garburator

Follow up question, does WM do sewage in Canada? Here they just pick up trash cans/recycling.

I'm honestly not sure. I used the term because I wasn't sure if black and grey water are always treated the same so I wasn't sure if sewage treatment would fit. I think wastewater is the general term.

I think it's usually two separate services both owned typically by the city.

I have never heard garbage disposal called that before

As a Canadian, I’ve never heard it called a Garbage Disposal before. Garbage disposal here is done by two guys and a truck once a week.

Garbage disposal is really not a very intuitive name. Always confused me as a kid. I like “garbeurator” but I also had no idea what it meant when I saw it. We need an objectively transparent name for these things! “In-sink masticator?”

One of the popular brands is the insinkerator. I always thought that was a good name for it.

For a long time as a kid I thought those were In-sink Erators, and that an Erator was something that blended garbage.

I distinctly remember telling a plumber my parents had called "I think its the erator" and him just nodding and smiling 😅

Canadians have garbage cans. USians have trash cans. Just the way it is...

Per Wikipedia They are in 3% of Canadian homes, and 50% of American homes.

I’ve got all the wiring etc. for one, but chose not to install, opting for municipal composting instead. The odd time that I need to macerate, I just run stuff through my blender.

TIL that garburator is a regional term.

But considering NYC apparently banned them for several years until it was found that they didn't damage the sewer system, probably not.

Interesting. I had no idea that they banned it. I guess it means my question wasn't as silly as I thought

The sub exists for a reason, no such thing as a stupid question when it is legitimately in the pursuit of knowledge, no matter how trivial the knowledge may seem.

It kinda varies depending on the citys municipal system. Wastewater systems are built with this in mind so they usually have a few different means of using this waste as energy. Some plants have methods to create CNG from the organic matter. Most plants collect the organics, treat it and use it in agriculture as fertilizer.

They shouldn't, it is just breaking up the material earlier. I imagine if people went out of their way to use it more it could make things worse but I would bet on the units dying before it made a difference. Chances are you have one on your block already if it a built up area, just underground where you cant see it.

Already bigger apartment buildings are having to install them.