5 Benefits Of Using A Waste Disposal Unit

rubbish bags

Waste Disposers – The Top 5 Benefits Explored

1.  Stop the Rot! – Keep Your Kitchen Fresh and Clean

Now many councils have reduced collections to biweekly meaning rubbish bags with food waste in starting to rot on your doorstep creating nasty smells, attracting unwanted insects and vermin including rats.  A disposer will eliminate all of that leaving your bagged waste as just inorganic inert material making it a pleasure to handle.  No more carrying outside double wrapped plastic bags that are heavy and which then split spilling their smelly rotten putrefying food waste everywhere, which you have to clear up or even have to spray with bleach.  Your kitchen and house is kept hygenic, fresh, clean and free of such hazards and mess saving space too – essential for city life where space is a premium!

 

Rats attracted by waste2.  Keep Rats, Cats, Foxes and Insects Away

It has been estimated that in the UK a house (whether in the city or country) is never more than 20 m away from rats which carry many nasty diseases.   Given the attraction of waste food to other vermin and insects why on earth would you want to have it lying around? Even worse domestic cats will also mix in the same refuse that these vermin have contaminated which risks bringing their diseases inside the home.

 

3. Save Money

A decent domestic WDU will cost around £500-700 installed depending on the size.   To run costs pennies a week, it uses the electricity of a 100w light bulb for 3 minutes every time you use it and the amount of water is less than a flush of a toilet for each use.  The financial savings come from the extra bin bags that many councils now charge for and which will only rise  in the next few years.  New EC and Government regulations on dumping waste to landfills mean that the amount going to them has to be reduced. To achieve that the landfill tax has risen from nothing to £72/tonne in the past few years.

fish bones and egg shells for disposal

Our local council now charges 50p/bag but this is sure to rise to £2-3/bag in the next few years due to the financial pressures on them.   Add in the other cost savings on the bags and cleaning materials that are no longer used then the WDU will easily pay for itself in 2-3 years at £1/bag for a typical family of four.

 

4. Help Save the Environmental

Approximately 25% of all waste going to landfill is organic food.  In the UK 19m tonnes of food waste a year is dumped in landfill which rots down to produce harmful methane and carbon dioxide which pollute the atmosphere.  With a disposer however the waste is sent instead to the sewage treatment works where it either converted into biogas and in turn valuable electricity.   The food waste actually helps the smooth operation of the sewage works.  Not only the volume of waste food is put to good use but the plastic bin bags themselves are not used saving further money and damage to landfills (which are often double bagged).  About 80% of sewage works currently use this anaerobic digestion process to generate power that is sold to the grid.   Methane is 25 times more damaging than carbon dioxide to the environment so taken together with the landfill benefits disposers can make a substantial difference to our planet.

Clean kitchen couple

5. Better than Composting

Some people claim that composting is better for the environment than using the lazy man’s waste disposal unit.  This is simply not true.  Firstly, you still have the mess and space of having a compost heap that is simply not practical in cities.   Secondly, whilst composting does save on landfills (and the very small amount of electricity and water that they consume) it doesn’t address the other big benefit of disposers that of the greenhouse gasses released from the waste. The methane and carbon dioxide are not captured and used to generate electricity and offset carbon like they are in a sewage plant and so the opportunity to help the environment is lost.

Waste disposal units really are the easiest and most effective way to not only save money and mess but help the environment too.