apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

interesting post. thanks for the info. who knew?

Oh good I don't have to worry about having one then.

This is good news. I try to limit my waste in the home to a couple small grocery bags a week. Knowing at least half of it is food waste is now a relief.

In Toronto we have a very comprehensive recycling, organic waste, and garbage program. We put out one small liner of trash a week, a bunch of recycling, and a bag of organics (which includes everything from soiled Kleenex to food waste) - Amazing.

Too bad about the disposal news. It's always been on my kitchen wish-list. SO handy.

I love how green the world is getting. Too little too late?

I was considering a garbage disposal for a while as a way to avoid throwing food waste into the trash can (which made me feel very guilty) but after doing some research decided against it. The food is ground up and out of your sight faster, and no it doesn't go to a landfill, but it does put more stress on the systems filtering and cleaning the water which uses more energy/resources (= not green).

Instead I got a worm bin and keep it on the balcony. It's small, not smelly, and in the end the food scraps become nutritious soil for my plants. The City of Vancouver (Canada) has a program that provides you with a small ventilated bin, 500 red wiggler worms, a bag of 'brown layer' (straw and shredded newspaper), a book on worm bins, and a 1 hours class on how to do it all... just for $25. Vancouverites can contact City Farmer for more info.

I used to love these but now dislike them for these very reasons, along with being loud, scary and taking up too much space under the counter. Important when you have a tiny kitchen.

I asked around my new town (Madrid) and apparently they are discouraged against putting one in. One woman was told that it fed the rats or roaches in the city and made the infestation worse. I do miss it sometimes, I'll be honest. But oh well, I can live without.

That is complete b.s. - composting is not more "green" than garbage disposals. Its really dumb to make broad statements like that. It all depends on what happens after it goes down the drain.

More and more cities are now separating and burning the organic materials/waste for energy production. A few years ago, a study at the U. of Wisconsin Madison did some nice comparisons...
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0228biz-garbagedisposal0228.html

And tell the person living in the 6th floor 1 bedroom to compost.

Cheers!

So we throw biodegradable food into a plastic bag that won't biodegrade thus sealing the biodegradable contents within forever? How is that better??

Weekly sourced at the original site, overbroad and undersupported. That's the kind of flimsy generalization that will kill the whole "green" fad. Now landfills aren't so bad after all; two years from now will be a warning that composting is killing us all. People will get tired of following the trend and ignore all ot it, including the legitimate stuff.

One more thing to worry about...and breathing increases my "carbon foot-print". I guess I should stop that too, er, no wait....the methane from my rotting corpe would...oh never mind!

Oh, and I already compost like a bandit....

The city of Raleigh, NC recently voted to ban garbage disposals. A very interesting move which has been met with a great deal of criticism.

-Raleigh Sends Disposals Down Drain-
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/2525204/

"Violators face fines of up to $25,000 a day and the loss of their water service..." Oh my.

A garbage disposal is really useful when you're cleaning out the fridge. Sometimes you just want to make something disgusting go away quickly, with lots of dish soap. That said, my apartment building got chosen for Seattle's multifamily composting pilot programing and I love it. I notice I've cut back on use of the garbage disposal dramatically.

What is really irritating is the electrical design of my kitchen, which puts the switch for the garbage disposal in a place where intuitively you expect the light switch. I've turned it on once or twice in the middle of the night trying to get a light on to get a glass of water and it's a terrifying experience, even if it didn't do any lasting damage in the 1-2 seconds it ran dry.

I always though garbage disposals were not very green based on the fact that it takes more energy to clean the water afterwards... And they are creepy

Total freaking nonsense. To say generally across every municipality that garbage disposals are worse than landfills is totally irresponsible. In many places landfill waste must be shipped by truck, while solid waste is re-used for energy generation, or responsibly re-integrated into the food cycle.

Different municipalities have different policies - look yours up to see what waste process your infrastructure was optimized for.

Honestly this is a total garbage post - AT could do a little background research before posting this sort of thing.

You *can* tell the person in the sixth floor one bedroom to get an indoor composter and use it in potted plants in the house.

I'll use a garbage disposer any day for food waste over dealing with roaches, mice and other vermin due to poorly stored garbage. Environmental/green issues? sorry, I have limits.

Sigh, some comments on this post just made me lose hope regarding people's attitudes on becoming more green. Gotta get out of my TreeHugger/Re-Nest blog circle more...

"That is complete b.s. - composting is not more "green" than garbage disposals."

Composting is more green than anything else you can do with food garbage (short of eating them/feeding them to animals, I suppose... ha). It's the ultimate cradle-to-cradle solution, and is much easier than some might think.

"And tell the person living in the 6th floor 1 bedroom to compost."

I compost in my 2nd floor 1 bedroom apartment.

"So we throw biodegradable food into a plastic bag that won't biodegrade thus sealing the biodegradable contents within forever?"

Uh, the word "biodegradable" means capable of being composted. How can something biodegrable not biodegrade?