The argument for garbage disposals is a strong one.
In most new construction, particularly with town homes and condos, garbage disposal units (usually cheap ones) are included and recognized as a standard appliance. Particularly in the United States, they have become a popular and convenient to keep your kitchen cleaner.
But do they really improve your quality of life?
And if they do, how does it actually happen?
While garbage disposals are hard to put a value on, a lot of folks who are considering installing one, perhaps with a new kitchen renovation, want to see exactly how they help and what the benefits are to using one in your main cooking area.
Here, we'll look at five conveniences and benefits offered by a garbage disposal to help you decide whether or not you're ready to buy one.
If you are, checkout our top garbage disposal recommendations here.
1. Doing Dishes is Quicker
Growing up in the country without a garbage disposal, the first step to take when I had to do the dishes was "scrape" them. This involved spooning food waste into the garbage before actually rinsing off the dishes to be put in the dishwasher.
With a garbage disposal, the scraping and rinsing steps are bundled into one process.
It's a simple, but very noticeable difference.
2. Kitchen Smells Better
I've heard some people voice concern that garbage disposals actually make your kitchen smell worse. In my experience, that has never been the case. Garbage disposals help your kitchen smell better because they immediately remove food waste, where the alternative is letting it languish in your trash can until you can physically take it outside.
While there can be an initial burst of food odor during the grinding of food waste in a garbage disposal, that burst is generally short lived and isolated to the area directly over the sink.
If you're at all concerned about keeping a kitchen that's clean and smells good, a garbage disposal is a huge step in that direction.
3. Cooking is Simpler
When there's a garbage disposal installed in your sink, you can easily throw food waste directly into it, which is extremely helpful for those that cook a lot at home. One of the instances where I've found it to be most helpful is when dealing with egg shells. I crack the egg and the shell goes straight into the disposal.
4. Take Out the Trash Less
My wife and I have four kids, so trash piles up high enough in our house even without us having to throw food waste in the trash cans.
If we didn't have a garbage disposal and we had to deal with food waste on top of all the trash we already make, we'd be taking out the trash a lot more, wasting additional energy and garbage bags.
Having a garbage disposal means we can worry about that chore a few less times a week.
As a side bonus, it also cuts down drastically on the amount of interest that pests and furry woodland creatures take in our trash cans (squirrels will chew right threw them to get to food).
5. Less Pollution
Garbage disposals solve a problem that landfills have struggled with for quite a while: How to handle solid food waste that emits methane.
Instead of going into a pile in a landfill, food waste that runs through a garbage disposal goes into city water systems where it is filtered from the water and its methane is captured in a controlled environment then used as re-purposed bio-fuel.
Garbage disposals are inherently environmentally friendly.
Conclusion
While there is additional cost and installation work involved with owning a garbage disposal, these are up-front costs that don't last. Once you have one purchased and installed, the benefits of a garbage disposal are palatable and easy to identify.
If you're like my wife and I, you'll wonder how you every survived without one.
Particularly if you're in a city or in a smaller home where you use the kitchen heavily, a garbage disposal will save you a lot of time and energy, and will help keep your kitchen cleaner, both before and after meals.
We'd recommend checkout out our main garbage disposal roundup or some of the additional resources below.
Additional Garbage Disposal Resources
AUTHOR: Ryan is a DIYer, homeowner, and general fan of a clean, good-smelling kitchen.