I’ll be honest, when I first joined sinks-taps.com earlier this year, I considered waste disposal units to be those horrible death traps from Hollywood movies. The sleeping mutilator, lurking under the kitchen sink. Just waiting for someone to drop their wedding ring/watch/front door key into, and be forced to venture a tentative hand, wrist, arm, into the murky, unseen depths, and then… “Aaargh!”
This was the understanding with which I approached waste disposal units for most of my life. Even last year, when visiting friends in Los Angeles, I was fascinated by their kitchen waste disposer. So much so that I was always conscious of it being there, and took extra care not to drop anything into the sink that might give me cause to go fishing around in the old limb-mangler.
I have since learned that this, as some of you may already be aware, was nonsense. A standard, under-sink waste disposal unit is not particularly dangerous. In fact, they don’t even contain blades.
I also harboured other reservations regarding waste disposal units, which I had carried with me without ever bothering to find out whether or not they were actually true.
The list included:
• “They are not environmentally friendly”
• “They are noisy”
• “They are expensive”
Having since taken the time to actually investigate these matters, it turns out that I was wrong on every single point:
• Environment: Second only to composting, waste disposal units are one of the most environmentally friendly ways to deal with household food waste. With best estimates indicating that UK households send more than three quarters of their food waste to landfill sites, it is easy to see that waste disposal units are a welcome alternative.
• Noise: Waste disposal units do not create very much noise at all, and certainly not as much as some common kitchen appliances, such as food processors or washing machines. Plus, since waste disposers do what they do so quickly, any noise produced only occurs for a very brief moment.
• Cost: With waste disposal units available from as little as £79 for the InSinkErator ISE45, cost really doesn’t have to be any sort of barrier.
In Summary: Waste disposal units are not dangerous, un-eco-friendly, noisy or expensive. They are our friends. Instead of pulling our hands back from those imaginary blades, we should reach out and hug/install one.
With best estimates indicating that UK households send more than three quarters of their food waste to landfill sites, it is easy to see that waste disposal units are a welcome alternative.
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