I put one in for resale although we are in our forever home but you just never know - right? I never use it. I never used the old one in 20 years. In our area they will probably be disallowed in the next 5-7 years as they aren't particularly environmentally friendly.

No disposal here. Don't want one, or see the point. Veg. waste goes to compost bucket. Icky meat scraps to freezer 'til garbage day. Drains are hassle enough to keep clean and running (and do simple plumbing on). Why add a GD to the mix?

It's my understanding that installing or retrofitting GD isn't a big deal, so if your only concern is resale wait until presale looms. As a potential buyer I'd be more impressed with "seller will install new GD of my choice (up to certain $$ figure if necessary)" than oh, yeah, there's someone else's used GD in the sink. And it gives sellers a useful negotiation tool to "add in" something you would have done anyway. And if would-be buyers don't happen to ask, then you're a few hundred bucks ahead.

It's the same with dishwashers. I don't have one; don't particularly want one, and beyond making sure that there's space for one, and electric and plumbing planned for one, I think I'll skip it. (I actually do own a brand new European one, but I've never been curious enough about it to bother installing it. It came as part of package deal with some laundry appliances. It seems destined to be with them in my laundry room, where I plan to use it for washing pet bowls. Part of my reluctance to have a DW in the kitchen is that none of my dishes, glasses, flatware, knives, wooden ware and not many of my pots are DW-safe - that pretty much leaves me with just small utensils, All-clad and Pyrex ware. It takes a really big cooking production to use enough of those things to fill a DW load. I think I'd be holding dirty bowls and pots for days and then snatching out a needed item and handwashing it on the fly.)

If you want to leave your options open leave enough room for a disposal; run the electrical services need (including to any wall or for counter-mounted control switch sites) and then make careful measurements and take photos if the electrical lines will disappear under backsplashes or counter top, so you can later locate them without too much damage; add in any over-sized waste pipes (if needed); then just cross it off your list.

I'm sure you can find other ways to spend the money you would have spent on the GD ;)

L

I didn't put one in. I thought about it, but as I've never had a disposal I don't know what I'm missing. My sister has one, I've never seen her use it.

We don't have one...they are not allowed here if you have a septic system. The only time I miss it is when I want the water to drain quicker (turning it on when the sink has water in it caused the disposal to suck the water down quickly, or at least it did where I used to live).

I think it's a pretty personal thing. I haven't had one since I was a kid, and it wouldn't make much sense for our house---we compost fruits + veggies and have municipal food waste pickup for all other food, which is most of what might wind up in there, and we're on old city sewers so you're not permitted to put anything with fat or grease down the drain, disposal or otherwise. I would go nuts trying to separate things that could and couldn't go down it. It's a non-issue for resale here, as far as I know. (I've never seen a house advertised as having one, or noticed one way or the other if there was one---I mean, we bought a house with no dishwasher, and looked seriously at a couple of houses with no heat, and neither had buyer credits for those things!)

The big upside to not having a garbage disposal for us was that we had plenty of room to have an undersink trash and recycling pullout while still having a deep sink. Both of those are worth far more to me in a small kitchen than the GD would be---but again, a personal thing.

Thanks for your input. I am going to have the wiring done and skip the GD for now anyway.

I have one. I plan to have one on each of my sinks in the new kitchen. I compost kitchen scraps (fruit, veggie, meat) through my city's "green" can along with yard waste, but I still seem to end up with little pieces of fruit/veggie trimmings in the bottom of the sink that are a PITA to get out of the sink. I run those down the GD. Plus, DH and my other little kitchen helper sometimes put food waste down the drain, especially little bits of uneaten cereal and milk. For me, separating the milk from the cereal bits into the compost would drive me nuts.

Houses for sale in my area usually do list GD as an appliance.

This is pretty interesting to hear you're not allowed a GD. I've actually heard I'm required to get one to pass inspection here. I will have to put it on my list of things to do to call city planning to check on that. Sounds ludicrous to me. We compost everything and when our GD broke 15 years ago I didn't fix or miss it. Why on earth be forced to buy a useless appliance?

Liriodendron's arguments and precautions sound eminently sensible to me. If the principle purpose for buying the GD would be for the next owner, why not let them have their choice, brand new, garnering brownie points the whole way...

I've had garbage disposals since 1971 and would rather give up my dishwasher than my disposal. We live in a condo and can't compost and there is nothing more disgusting, IMO, than food in the trash. LOVE my InSinkerator.

I'm shopping for one now for our son and his wife, for Christmas. I spent a week up there playing "Grandma," and they need a GD....they have a large dog and a new baby, and it's just a hassle without one. Home Depot, here I come!

We have composting by law now!

I put one in my main sink and use it only for the reasons breezygirl mentioned... the little bits of yuck, too wet for the bin, etc...

I don't have one in my prep sink. I got this really cool Blanco deep strainer basket instead (although silly backordered thing held up my kitchen plumbing for like 3 weeks!). It allows you to have lots of peelings and whatnot in the drain without it becoming all plugged and having to clear midway through the chopping and peeling. I love love it. My contractor said he was going to buy one for his own house :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Blanco strainer

May I ask where people live who are not allowed to have a GD? Such a thing never occurred to me.

I remember the corner garbage strainer we had in the sink as a kid into which went the dinner plate remains and coffee grounds. When it was my night to do the dishes (forced child labor!), I remember having to knock all the garbage out of it into a bit of newspaper and then carrying it out into the scary dark to the garbage can. I like my garbage disposal.

We are allowed to have them, but it is the case that older cities in many parts of the country have sewer systems that combine wastewater and runoff. If you live somewhere along a coast and the sewers haven't been upgraded, this can mean that things that go down the sink sometimes go directly into nearby oceans or bays---one reason GDs are sometimes banned, since this can disrupt natural balances in the aquatic ecosystems there (which is the main reason they're not considered environmentally-friendly). Old sewer systems in general are the other (probably bigger) reason---pipes can clog if there are bits left in the water that goes down the drain.

We're in Northern California, where GDs are not banned, but where you cannot put oil/grease down the drain because it feeds into the bay. Most of the older cities here don't have separated sewer systems (though San Francisco is currently upgrading its sewers). So one reason we don't have one is that it's awfully hard to separate food with grease from food without. The city green bin, in contrast, can take everything, so it just goes into there instead.

I'm finding this thread to be a learning experience. Its so interesting how different people live in other areas of the country (world).

Our local water treatment plant collects all those bits of stuff and sells it as fertilizer. I've heard of people composting grass trimmings but food? Do you have a bin outside for all your food scaps? Wouldn't that attract rats? Composting by law? How is that inforced? Around here many people don't even recycle. Just wondering...

I confess that when in kitchens without a disposal I have turned the strainer over and just flushed the stuff down the drain. DH learned that quick and installed a GD.

Paulabrady, If you don't want a GD, don't bother installing one. Smart decision having the wiring done now.

Wow, I wouldn't want to be without one... I had no idea either that they were banned elsewhere!

It's not enforced yet but has made a difference. link

SF now diverts 77% from landfills!

"...one reason GDs are sometimes banned, since this can disrupt natural balances in the aquatic ecosystems there (which is the main reason they're not considered environmentally-friendly)."

Asa if the millions of gallons of black water is not doing the actual damage.

How many times a day do you use the toilet?

How many times a day do you run the GD?

It sounds like a 'feel good' fix while they dither over sewage treatment (the real cause of many of the problems).

We live in a high rise condo and have now learned to carry teeny bags of organic trash to the garbage chute next to the elevators. A real small amount of stuff. Often, its shape and consistency would not cause any risks if it went into the toilet and got flushed. ((Hey, how come nobody ever mentions that?))

Carrying a little bag to the garbage chute reminds me of those urban dog owners who carry dog poop in a bag after walking their dog. It seems obvious now. But for many many years pre-renovation, we had a medium size garbage pail located under the sink. We used it. It didn't make sense to take stuff out, after a day or two. Yukk was the reaction we had then. Now, we would think it gross to KEEP our organic garbage longer than 48 hours. So, yes, "there is nothing more disgusting, IMO, than food in the trash".

Now, we have several clean-looking (beautiful) utility containers which cost $5 to $100. We put a little bag in them. We alternate which one we are using for the gross stuff. They live in a 15" deep drawer under the sink, so the top of the container is really near the countertop edge. Open the drawer a few inches, and scoop stuff over the front edge into the expensive bag-lined container. VoilÃÂ . Job done. Take bag out later, walk out of the condo, go down the hall, go into the recycling closet and open the garbage chute door by pulling a yukky handle, toss the baggie and walk back calmly. Whew.

The recycling closet is where people put cardboard glass etc, for the janitors to pick up.

As far as I know, anyone can compost, indoors. I'll look into it and get that started, one day in 2011.

In 2009 I posted about not using a GD. That thread got some traction. Every four months since then another thread gets opened which asks the same question. Sometimes the aggregate response has trended towards a different consensus; the same topic / question produces a different "crowd" answer. I find this is an interesting point about a "crowd" providing answers. Whether it helps us know if we want a GD is not clear to me. I don't know what it means in terms of GD's.

hth

So to answer debrak's questions, we use one of these (actually, I use one under the prep sink and one under the main sink)

{{!gwi}}

When they are full (probably every 1 to 3 days), we take them outside and put them in the big green bin (along with yard waste, etc). We can put meat, paper towels, pizza boxes, into the green bins too. Once a week the big truck takes it away and they make compost and use it to grow grapes in Napa/Sonoma for the wine we all need to complete our kitchen renovations (cheaper than therapy).

The big green bin looks like this. No rats or racoons seem to bother them. You can always set something heavy on the lid. {{!gwi}}.

We used to have a gd. I thought it was disgusting and was relieved when we had it removed (almost never used it anyway). Our sink drained slowly and a few times over the yrs we had plumbers out to clean the pipes, and I got to see the nasty black goo that built up. I have to believe some of that was from food residue that was sent down the drain (even if it was supposedly ground up by the gd). No disposal, no food down the drain. We haven't had trouble with the sink backing up since the gd went away. Probably the newer ones work better, but still I am happy not to have one. We just toss stuff into the trash can under the sink and take it out as needed (we have covered outdoor cans emptied weekly by the city).

Now the thing I have never understood is why people are willing to put diapers containing solid waste directly into their trash. I don't believe landfills are equipped to handle human waste. We always flushed the solids down the toilet, whether we were using cloth or disposables on our kids. (sorry for the digression)

@brickeye, the impact of garbage disposals in communities where it matters is very real. Not every city has this problem, though---it's really only if you have aging, combined sewers. But *if* you do---yes, it is a very real issue. GDs use 1-2 gallons more water per day to operate than you would otherwise run down your drain, and they send small food particles down the drain. Multiply this by half or even a quarter of the households in a medium-sized city and you're running a lot of additional water and particles through the system. Where I live, when the combined sewers overflow (usually from wastewater coupled with heavy winter rain or snow melt off the Sierras in the spring), the untreated water spills out and directly into San Francisco Bay, the Oakland Estuary, and the lake by my house. The damage is certainly from all that water combined---but GDs do contribute, and given that they are a convenience, not a necessity (as opposed to blackwater)---we and many other residents here simply opt out. Would it be better to fix the sewers? Sure. But I doubt any significant investment in public infrastructure is happening any time soon in most older American cities, so until then, we have to work with what we have. Like I said before, it's a personal choice for every household, but like many modern conveniences, it isn't "free."

Oh, and @debrak, food waste recycling is actually a different program than yard waste recycling, which is what it sounds like your community has. Food waste is collected in a closed bin and taken to what is essentially a big industrial compost heap, so things like meat can go into it, whereas it's complicated to compost meat at home without closely monitoring your compost pile. If you just have yard trimming recycling, you shouldn't add food to it---your city's system probably isn't set up to handle it. We have a big green bin like marcydc's that we keep in the garage, and we also have a home compost pile that is in a big plastic bin that we got from our local waste company. We put fruits, veggies, and yard trimmings in the home compost, which isn't completely sealed but has never been a problem with raccoons (and there are LOTS of them here!) All other food and food-soiled paper goes into the green bin; we collect both in little bins in the kitchen, and take them out to empty when they're full. Our city then sells the compost very cheaply to residents and, I think, uses the rest for farming and such. It's a pretty good system; it cut our landfill waste down dramatically, so when we redesigned the kitchen, we actually shrank the size of that can significantly.

Neither composting nor recycling is required by law in our city, but in places where recycling is mandatory (San Francisco is one, I think) they enforce it by spot checks and fines if they find recyclables in your regular trash stream. I imagine they might do something similar for food waste. Notably, though, it's mandatory not to force you to be a green do-gooder, but because it costs the city money to put that extra trash into the landfill rather than diverting it. Recycling programs typically cost cities more than they make from them, but the primary purpose from the city's point of view is money saved in not having to pay for additional landfill space. In the SF Bay Area, most of the urban landfills have closed, so trash is sent out to other communities further out, and they (rightly!) charge a lot for the privilege.

My municipality operates like Marcyd's. Only our green can (with exactly what Marcyd mentioned goes in hers) gets picked up every other Monday. Oh, and my green waste doesn't go to Napa! I love being able to plunk all that compostable material in there instead of the garbage!

What an interesting thread! Now for you successful composters: I suck at composting. Living in southern CA where it's really dry, I find that my compost just desiccates. If I add water, it gets really yukky. Doesn't seem to be a happy medium. Since I do garden organically, I'd actually like to have the compost.

paulabrady: do you compost the garbage that hasn't been going down a disposal?

Love mine and wouldn't want to be without.

paulabrady, Thank you for starting this thread. Sounds like you have made your decision.

To all, thank you for the education. Looks like every area has different issues so you need different responses. I would do food composting if it were in this area.

We are on a septic, so the previous owner did not install GD's on the sinks. In 16 years, I never missed it. The less you put down your drain, the better anyway. In my remodel, we wired for one and then realized we didn't want one.