Garbage disposals are valuable appliances that make cleaning dirty dishes and your kitchen a breeze. Rather than heading to the landfill, garbage disposals shred food, passing it through the plumbing system, and allowing it to be treated with human waste in sewage treatment plants. This option allows food waste to be transformed into recycled nutrients while reducing global emissions created in landfills.
What You Can Put Down a Garbage Disposal
Ice Cubes
A typical kitchen hack for cleaning your garbage disposal is throwing a couple of ice cubes down the drain. Experts share that ice cubes can loosen food residue stuck to the garbage disposal blades.
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It’s a common misconception that ice cubes will freshen up the smell of a foul garbage disposal. If you want to deodorize your garbage disposal simultaneously, combine the ice cubes with a safe deodorizer, such as baking soda and white vinegar.
Soft Foods
As a general rule, if the food is soft enough to be fed to a baby, it can go down your garbage disposal. Make sure everything put in the garbage disposal is chopped into small pieces first.
What You Should NEVER Put Down a Garbage Disposal
Fats, Oils, and Grease
It’s universally agreed upon that fats, oils, and grease should never go down your disposal or sink drain. This category includes creamy foods, like butter, heavy cream, peanut butter, and ice cream.
Coffee Grounds
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Many homeowners are surprised to hear that they shouldn’t put coffee grounds down their drain because this is a commonly touted hack to freshen a garbage disposal’s aroma.
Coffee grounds can clump and form a large mass in your garbage disposal, which is difficult for the disposal to grind up. A few coffee grounds rinsed out of a coffee cup is acceptable, but avoid dumping large amounts of coffee grounds down the disposal drain.
Fruit Pits
As a general rule, hard foods, like fruit pits, should never be ground up in the garbage disposal. If you can’t chop the food up easily with a knife, it’s too hard to run through the disposal. Placing fruit pits in the disposal may work the first one or two times, but you’ll soon be left with a broken garbage disposal.
Trash
Yes, saying that you shouldn’t put trash down your garbage disposal seems like an ironic statement. You’d be shocked by how many plumbers find items like paper towels, wrappers, hard rinds, banana peels, and other non-food items in these appliances after they’re called to fix a broken or clogged garbage disposal.
Eggshells & Onion Skins
It’s an old myth that eggshells sharpen garbage disposal blades. But, this doesn’t effectively sharpen garbage disposal blades, and the thin membrane inside the eggshell can damage the appliance.
The thin membrane of eggshells or onions often separates from the shell or onion skin as they’re ground up and can get loose and stuck in the drain or around the disposal’s impeller.
Pasta & Starchy Foods
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While cooked pasta is soft enough to go down the drain, you still shouldn’t put starchy foods or pasta down your garbage disposal.
Starches and pasta absorb water and expand, so placing noodles down your drain results in the noodles soaking in water and expanding within your drain. Like pasta, oatmeal is another risky food that can grow inside the drain, making it a no-no for the garbage disposal.
As is the case with other items on this list, a few stray starchy food scraps won’t hurt your disposal. But you shouldn’t dump an entire pasta bowl down the drain.
Cleaning Chemicals
Normal cleaners made for the sink, such as dish soap, are fine going down the drain. However, harsh industrial-grade drain cleaners and drain busters can wear down your disposal and even your drain line faster than expected.
Ice cubes and dish soap are good alternatives to put down your disposal for freshening and sharpening the blades without accelerating the wear and tear on your disposal and drain lines.
Closing Thoughts
Despite this extensive list, garbage disposals can handle most food waste as long as it’s in small pieces. Assess what you and your family are currently putting down the drain and discuss what they should never place down the drain and instead put in the trash can. Making a few changes to what you place down the disposal can save you the cost of replacing your disposal prematurely or dealing with expensive plumbing problems.
Source: https://t-tees.com
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