to think an insinkerator looks like the crappest product ever?

[theyoungvisiter]

How is mincing up your food and flushing it into the water courses anything other than massively wasteful and yuck?

What's wrong with composting it, or recycling it in the food waste bin?

Ewwwww.

oh all right - no-one else cares. Sob.

I just saw an ad for it between Grand Designs episodes and thought WTF!

have you never come across the concept of a waste disposal before?

I thought they were only in American films - along with superwide fridges with icemakers in teh doors and all sorts of other nutty products we in the UK are too sensible to require.

Apparently now we are too fat-arse lazy to walk to the bin?!

I know someone who got one after her food bin got maggots because the council only collected it every two weeks. I wouldn't put cooked food in a compost bin unless I wanted to get on first name terms with the local rat population.

I've had one in each of the 2 houses in which I've lived over the last 10 years and I recall there was one in the house in which I lived as a child between the years of (approx) 1981 and 1984. I remember my Mum lost her wedding ring and was fishing down it, explaining to me there were knives down there and I must never copy her and put my hand down it.

Well I have both a waste disposal unit, and a compost bin.
The 2 are not mutually exclusive.
They are v useful for someone like my mum who lives in a flat, with no garden, so nowhere to put her food waste apart from in the black bins.
I am actually amazed you have only heard of them in 2011.
I remember our first waste disposal being installed in 1979, they were the dernier cri then...

Not everyone wants a stinking compost heap in their garden, or rotting food in their rubbish bins for a week.

Shit, my parents got a new kitchen in 1989 that had a waste disposal. In England. And it wasn't a cutting edge, uber-modern kitchen

Yes, obvs you don't put cooked food in the compost.

You put the cooked stuff in the council food bin which goes to a nice biodigester place and makes energy. Much better than flooding the watercourses, surely?

Maggots in the food bin - honestly, who cares? It's outside the house - it's a bin - it's not like you're being asked to eat off the bin?

Madamedeathstare, I don't think the OP gets out much, or is attempting to provoke a uk v us debate.
She sounds like my gran - " I don't know why you would want one of those, we managed quite well without one in the 1930's".

I do concede they might have a place if you don't have a garden (though I've lived in a second floor flat for the last 8 years and have successfully managed to haul my food waste down to the communal recycling bin).

Otherwise it's just laziness and modern prissiness over (eek) smells. [Gavel]

Have you seriously NEVER seen one in the UK?? We had one in the 80's too.

our council gives a grant towards the cost if you have one installed. I really can't see what the problem is!

WTF? Really, you need to get out more, waste disposals are so last century...but I still want one

our council gives a grant towards the cost if you have one installed. I really can't see what the problem is!

If your food waste is going into landfill then fair enough.

Otherwise it's just shunting the problem off onto the water authority to deal with, isn't it? I can see why the council probably loves it - it's no longer their problem, they're paying to shift the disposal/processing costs off onto the water company.

I don't know - it just seems so 20th century. I did know a few people who had one in the 80s but back then no-one really gave recycling and energy costs a second thought. Mincing up your waste and waving bye-bye down the drain seemed perfectly reasonable.

I thought we were more enlightened now but clearly [shrug]

the ad shows a woman putting a carrier bag full of veg down it. Honestly.

We have one. It's very useful in the summer heat when the recycling food bin inevitably attracts maggotts and then blue bottles. [shrug].

Yes I agree - that's why I only use Ecover and similar washing up products. I do use bleach but only about once a month when I absolutely can't avoid it.

I also use ecoballs for washing clothes which are really weirdly good [witchcraft emoticon]

And I use cloth nappies.