I’ve always been kinda bummed that my last few apartments haven’t had garbage disposals. Now comes confirmation that it’s actually better to just dispose of your table scraps in the trash rather than running the disposal. Ideal Bite says that if you can’t compost, stick to the ole garbage can, to save water and energy.
- (Car)tuning out water waste. Disposals use about 500,000 gallons of water per day in the United States (both in your sink and during sewage treatment).
- Stopping supernatural algae. If you pump your breakfast into the garbage disposal it goes to water treatment facilities, and may go from there into nature where it’s at least three times more likely to disrupt ecosystems (via algal blooms) than it would if it went to a landfill.
- One less case for the waste peeps. Food scraps make up at least 10% of space in our landfills and off-gas methane, a greenhouse gas, but water treatment workers may fish out waste and send it to the landfill anyway.
