Many of you have written in to ask about a common household appliance: garbage disposals. Specifically, do disposals provide a positive solution for the inevitable household food waste?
Recently, Slate‘s Green Lantern examined whether it’s better to put food waste in the trash or zap it with your power ring a garbage disposal.
For those who don’t plan to read the short piece, I’ll give this away: composting trumps both.
Personally, I just moved into a house without a disposal a few months ago. I’d lived most of my life with one, but it’s not as difficult as I had feared to transfer the little bits of food waste from the drain basket to my nearby compost bucket.
That said, small items like rice and cous cous can slip down the drain. Even more reason to use every last grain!
Comments
2 responses to “Dispose All?”
So how can one implement a composting system into one’s household? Is it some sort of device that you purchase, or is it already provided when you get a home or apartment? I think that if more people knew how to compost, they would do it in favor of trashing food.
What a great question. You’re right in that the “C word” tends to intimidate or confuse people. It’s such a good question that I’ll dedicate tomorrow’s post to the topic.
The short answer is that you need a compost bin, which can be bought or built. Your home may have one outside, but your apartment surely doesn’t. Still, there’s hope for apartment dwellers.
Stay tuned…