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Plumbing Expert Warns People to Never Put This One Item Into Garbage Disposal: "They Can..."

This item, when dumped in excessive amounts, clumps when coming in contact with water, thereby, clogging the wastewater pipelines.

BY NEHA B.

PUBLISHED 4 DAYS AGO

(L) Woman disposes of items in the kitchen. (R) A kitchen sink with a garbage disposal machine underneath. (Representative Cover Image Source: (L) Pexels | Julia M Cameron), (R) Unsplash | Callum Hill)

On an epiphanous night in 1927, an architect named John Hammes was watching his wife clean up the kitchen after dinner. As he observed, a thought popped up in his head that would change the way Americans disposed of their kitchen waste. He wondered, "What if food scraps could be ground into tiny pieces and automatically flushed down the kitchen sink?" After a relentless pursuit over several years, he materialized his idea into reality with the invention of what we know today as the “garbage disposal,” also called “food waste disposer.”

Peeled carrots waste in a garbage bin. (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Eva Bronzini)

The electricity-powered machine is usually mounted below the kitchen sink, where it churns and pulverizes the food scraps inside its grinding ring and spits the gooey, liquified mass into the wastewater pipes, as explained by InSinkErator on YouTube. But like any other machine, a garbage disposer is not perfect. Failing to use it according to the rules can create problems for the homemakers down the road. In an interview with Reader’s Digest, Chuck Pound, a virtual plumbing expert with Frontdoor, revealed a list of items that should never be put inside a garbage disposal. Coffee grounds, to begin with.

After making a piping hot cup of coffee, people often tend to dispose of the leftover grounds into the sink and watch them disappear satisfactorily into the garbage disposal. “Coffee grounds are like wet sand. They don’t dissolve, and they clump together easily. They can collect other food particles as well,” Pound explained. But even for the times when you may have accidentally dumped the coffee grounds into the disposal, there is nothing to freak out about.

Coffee grounds placed in a filter. (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Maksim Goncharenok)

“If you can catch it, start running water to flush it out,” said Pound. However, the problem arises when one dumps the coffee grounds almost regularly. Chronic dumping of coffee down the drain can lead to the accumulation of sediment in the pipes, causing a stinky sink and a weak motor. Eventually, it can turn the blades dull and useless. In case of an accidental problem with coffee grounds, Pound suggested washing the disposer with as much hot water as possible to flush out the coffee grounds. “If you can get a lot of it out before it goes into the wall, you can probably fix it on your own,” he said.

Water dribbles from a kitchen tap (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Steve)

In addition to coffee grounds, other items on the list include vegetable peels, fibrous vegetables like celery, asparagus, and kale stems, onion skins, grease, eggshells, chicken bones, trash, pasta, cereal, oatmeal, and flour. Reader’s Digest explains that eggshell membranes and vegetable peels stick to the sides of the device and can snowball food particles, preventing blades from moving properly. Whereas things like pasta can swell up and block the pipes. Things like rice, pasta, oatmeal, and cereal can absorb water and expand.

Banana peels on a yellow background (Representative Image Source: Pixabay | SHVETS Productions)

These items create a paste that can stick and lead to a clog,” said Pound. Concluding, Pound said that essentially, a garbage disposer is not designed “for table scraps or preparation cleanup,” but “just for those small, leftover particles on your plate.” The goal, therefore, is to dump only those things that wouldn’t end up hampering the functioning of the machine.