[analog31]

In the town where I grew up, the city code required every house to have a disposal in the kitchen. The code stated that the rule was intended to help control rats. Every house I've lived in had one, but coverage is spotty in cheap rental units. I've never had to throw food waste in the trash.

[buildbot]

FYI, don’t dispose of food waste in a garbage disposal. It’s good for dealing with a small amount of food, but pipes are not designed for mass undigested food waste.

[tlb]

I've been doing it for many years in my house with no problem. Are you claiming that someday something will go terribly wrong and I'll regret it?

[buildbot]

Unironically, yes - You can find many sources online by googling it: https://www.stansac.com/blog/are-garbage-disposals-bad-for-p...

It could be that it never happens, but most food waste should go in the trash or ideally compost.

[tlb]

A clog doesn't quality as something going terribly wrong. Empirically, my plumbing costs are $300 over 10 years. By comparison, rats are actually a big problem in the deep wooded suburbs. We spend a lot more on exterminators, rat traps, poison, and mesh covers to keep them out of the house. Rats smell bad, scare the girls, attack the chickens, spread garbage around the pickup area, spread fleas to the dogs, and are a nontrivial vector for serious human diseases.

So given that rats are a bigger problem than clogs under my current policy of scraping plates down the disposer, I should probably do it even more.

[masfuerte]

So what are they for? If you scrape your plates so there are only tiny bits of soft food going down the drain you don't need a garbage disposal anyway. I don't have one and I've never had a blockage.

[dghlsakjg]

Someone selling a convenience product does not necessarily mean it is not flawed.

The company that sells you a garbage disposal doesn’t really care if there’s plumbing issues ten years down the line, or if the waste treatment plant can’t handle it, they already got paid.

Another example of this in the plumbing world is flushable wipes. They cause tons of issues in plumbing systems.

[analog31]

Food waste. Chase it with a reasonable amount of water. I've never had a drain clog due to food waste. Hair in bathtubs, yes.