7 Food Items That You Should Never Pour Down Your Kitchen Drain
It does not matter if one is making a quick meal or a giant thanksgiving feast. When it comes time to clean up, you'll always want to choose the easiest method to make the chore easy and most times, that's tossing whatever food waste you have down your sink. However, that isn't always ideal. Aside from the obvious effort to cut back food wastage, there are food items that should never be poured down a drain.
There's nothing more frustrating than a clogged sink. Here are 7 food items that must never go down your drain if you don't want to have to go through the trouble of calling your plumber every other week:
1. Bones
Bones, specifically from poultry, beef, pork, and lamb, are not safe to toss down your sink. Thick bones are rough on even the most industrial garbage disposal blades. Bones are much too dense and hard for garbage disposals to properly "chew" them up. However, not all bones are created equal. If you are cleaning fish, it is perfectly fine to toss the small bones down the sink; tiny bones break down easily and will not cause a problem. Anything bigger than a fishbone should be thrown away in the garbage.
2. Coffee Grounds
You probably make a pot of coffee before you leave for work, and if it is your day to do it at the office, you are probably making another pot there before noon. After you brew a pot of joe, don't toss the grounds down the sink. When thrown down the sink, coffee grounds can cause a buildup in pipes.
3. Flour
This kitchen staple is terrible news when it comes to putting it down your sink. Think about how flour gets when you mix it with water. It creates a substance that can best be described as a rival to Elmer's Glue. The flour will instantly clog your pipes and even cause your garbage disposal to get stuck.
5. Potato Peels
Potato peels seem innocent enough, but they can cause some serious problems if you try to get rid of them through the garbage disposal. It only takes a few to clog a drain, and since they are so full of starch, they have a tendency to clump together and can congeal into something almost like a paste.
6. Parts of Pumpkin
There are a few reasons parts of pumpkin should not go down your drain, and we'll start with the fact that it's stringy and will get tangled in your garbage disposal. Pumpkin also has a unique, pesky quality, and that's an ability to harden.
7. Milk
Also, milk expires in the blink of an eye, so you have probably poured the contents of a half-empty milk jug down the drain more than a few times. But pouring milk out can have a huge environmental impact, so much so that businesses in the UK can be fined for doing exactly that.
The problem is that the process of breaking milk down uses a lot of oxygen. When that process uses up that oxygen, that leaves less for the living things that rely on it. As a result, large quantities of milk can suffocate entire ecosystems, and large-scale milk spills have previously wiped out entire fish populations.
There you have 7 items that should always be thrown in a bin and never down a drain. Do you know of any other food items that can quickly clog drains?
