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?

        • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

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

          What an astonishingly terrible idea.

          • iforgotmyinstance@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

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

          • czardestructo@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • Corroded@leminal.spaceOP
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                1 year ago

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

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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

            • max@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • AA5B@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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

                • max@feddit.nl
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                  1 year ago

                  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!

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

          • key@lemmy.keychat.org
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            1 year ago

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

            • Corroded@leminal.spaceOP
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              1 year ago

              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.

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • scarabic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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?”

          • tapdattl@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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 😅

  • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Corroded@leminal.spaceOP
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      1 year ago

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

      • TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • UnexploredEnigma@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You’re not supposed to put extra stuff down the drain. It’s supposed to catch the incidental food waste stuck to platea that would otherwise go down whole.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.