Garbage Disposals Bad for the Environment?
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April 21st, 2009Trackback from : Make your own dirt « Travelling the road of discovery
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April 21st, 2009Trackback from : Make your own dirt « Travelling the road of discovery
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April 21st, 2009
Interesting! My family never used the disposal growing up so I never thought to use it on my own. But my husband does use it every once in a while. Hadn’t really thought about it’s environmental impact, but I agree that composting would be a better bet for any food scraps that make it to the sink.
The garbage disposal company’s mention of biosolids as a plus for garbage disposals made me think of the chapter in Garbageland about waste water treatment and biosolids. According to that book, the fertilizer made from biosolids contains some toxic chemicals (because of industrial waste mixing with the water and people pouring toxic chemicals down the drain). So the fertilizer cannot be used on any plants that we eat, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to use it on anything.
I do use a garbage disposal, but I’m planning on getting a worm bin going soon. But really, I think the solution is that cities should collect food waste like they collect recycling, and the food waste should be put through an anaerobic composter that collects the methane gas to use for energy while producing good quality fertilizer.
That is a great point Erin. It would make it far easier to recycle food waste for those who live in an apartment or don’t have an area for a composting bin. Cities in my area currently make their own compost from leaves collected from home owners, why not also collect food scraps? They could sell the compost and generate more revenue.
Well this is quite interesting even thought here in panama and Central America we don’t used to have this kind of artifacts so that’s great, I always been seen this kind artifacts in movies and also when I was living in the US, and believe me that almost every single house over there have one of it at least in the area that I was living. I never thought that this artifact will affect so much the earth and if it’s do it well people will stop use this, here in Panama we are not used to have this kind of artifacts and we are well without then so is not an indispensable tool for the kitchen.
On my blog, Reduce Footprints, we recently had a challenge to NOT use a garbage disposal. Your post was suggested by one of our readers (EcoGrrl). I’ll be wrapping up the challenge tomorrow (3/9/11) and will link to this post … hopefully a few more people will read it and learn some new information.
One of the issues that I believe needs to be addressed (and focused on) is food waste. If we didn’t have anything to toss down the drain, then using a disposal vs. not using one would become a moot point.
Thank you for a very informative post!
http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com