Disposing of garbage has been a problem for mankind even before the star of the Sopranos television series became an executive in the area of “waste management.” It became an issue around 1000 BC as people first began to establish permanent settlements. In 400 BC the first municipal dump was established in ancient Athens. Here, in all probability, thoughts of greatness mingled and rested on the smelly laurels of orange and lemon rinds, pomegranates, onions and grapes (sour and otherwise).
In Medieval Europe as well as Colonial America, pigs roamed through city streets devouring what was left of the blue and other color plate specials of the day. Pigs, however, also left their own waste behind and that coupled with thousands upon thousands of horse droppings turned some cities like New York into what many visitors described as “nasal disasters.” On some streets the smell was described as “bad eggs dissolved in ammonia.”
In 1657 New Amsterdam (New York) passed a law forbidding casting waste into the streets. Colonists in Virginia commonly buried their trash (that is, when they weren’t preoccupied with burying other colonists). Holes were commonly filled with building debris, broken glass or ceramic objects, oyster shells and animal bones. They also threw away hundreds of suits of armor that were sent from across the Atlantic by well meaning relatives to protect them from the slings and arrows of the native Indians who had the nerve to be angry at the people who stole their land from them.
Benjamin Franklin utilized slaves to carry Philadelphia’s waste downstream. In 1834 Charleston, West Virginia enacted a law protecting vultures from hunters because they ate the city’s garbage. T he first incinerator was built in the United States in 1885 on Governors Island in New York Harbor and between then and 1908, 180 garbage incinerators were built throughout the country.
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On the good side, disposals have reduced urban and landfill waste of organic material, which rots, smells, attracts flies and rodents and lends itself to disease transmission. The machines also offer considerable convenience in cleaning dishes and food preparation. Also, if you dump garbage into the trash, it usually stinks. If you put it in the disposal there’s no smell at all. (No fingers either, if you are not quick enough and don’t pay real good attention.)
On the bad side, disposals increase the Biological Oxygen Demand load to municipal wastewater treatment plants, thus increasing maintenance costs in these plants. The disposal has made us lazy. I myself once made the mistake of flushing mussel shells down there and the mess caused me to send in the plumbers. Almost everything that goes down the disposal could be used as either some type of animal feed (especially chickens and pigs) or utilized for composting.
And so, when one wonders what else one’s garbage disposal can do, the answer alas, must be nothing at all. So ask not what your garbage disposal can do for you, but rather what you can do for your garbage disposal A one-trick pony has its place in this world and consider that this pony is one you will never have to clean up after!
What is YOUR opinion about the garbage disposal?