Does your home have a garbage disposal installed? Most people make mistakes when it comes to caring for their drain. They neglect to install a garbage disposal, then wind up mortified when they’re forced to call in a plumber to do a complete drain overhaul. By installing a garbage disposal, you’re investing in a piece of technology that can extend the overall longevity of your entire plumbing system, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Although the prospect of putting food waste down your sink might seem counterproductive to a healthy drain, if you own a garbage disposal, that can be one of the best forms of drain maintenance available. It is an inevitability that a small amount of food waste will end up going down your drain, and that seemingly meager amount can build up over time, eventually resulting in a fatal clog. By installing a garbage disposal, any and all food waste is broken down into imperceptibly small fractions, greatly reducing the possibility of any of it clogging your drain.

One of the greatest nuisances to a homeowner, is having vermin such as rats and raccoons, or insects such as flies making a mess of their trash cans. By installing a garbage disposal in your home, you’re effectively reducing the amount of food waste that is left rotting in your garbage cans, thereby deterring these freeloaders. Not only can raccoons knock over your trash cans, making a mess of your entire yard, flies can lay eggs in them, spawning maggots that are practically impossible to remove by normal means.

By installing a garbage disposal in your home, you can not only reduce your trash can load, but also your carbon footprint. Saving the environment may not be the first thing that comes to mind when installing a garbage disposal, but that’s exactly what happens when you use it. When food waste is disposed via garbage disposal, it is flushing down the sewers into a waste treatment plant, where it is disposed of in a far more sanitary manner that if it had been left to rot at a local dump or landfill, releasing toxic gases that damage the environment.