Super Eco

Photo credit: cwright123, SXC

Insinkerator. Garburetor. The noisy chopping thing under your kitchen sink that eats food waste and (sometimes) wayward spoons. Is it green?

One word: not really. Okay, that's two words. But no, not green. The greenest thing you can do with your food waste is to compost it. Not the easiest thing to do for many of us, those who live in urban settings, and then there's the question of what to do with the compost. But we'll get to that in a minute. First things first. You can compost indoors. Like worms? That's one way. Or you can get an indoor composter. Compost can then be used to grow easy veggies like lettuce and tomatoes on your balcony or in a sunny window. Or donated to your community garden or community park.

So what's not green about the garbage disposal? Besides the fact that you could be composting, it uses electricity. And it sends stuff into the wastewater stream. Grease creates pipe clogs. All the extra material in the wastewater stream requires more pumping, which requires more electricity (19% of California's electricity use, for example, is for pumping water and wastewater). Oh, and what happens to that chopped-up food material in the wastewater stream? It's caught at the water treatment plant, scooped out and sent to molder in landfills, where it can't even properly turn into compost.

I love my garbage disposal. It eats those horrid fuzzy science projects that lurk in the back corners of the fridge. It eats everything I don't want to. But from now on (oh, the green guilt!) I think I'll try to use it less. I can always donate my compost to someone I know who's starting a vegetable garden.