Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock
Topics: YouTube, Technology, Food and Drink
William Morgan
A recording of what happens when you use your kitchen's garbage disposal has left people surprised after revealing how the common waste unit actually gets rid of your trash.
Roughly 50 percent of all homes in the US have one of these units, according to an American Housing Survey, while almost every other country on Earth has a negligible number of households that use the technology.
Even for those people who do use their sink's garbage disposal feature, how up close and personal do you really want to get with a machine that obliterates your food by spinning at 2800 RPM? Well, one man has figured out exactly how to do that, even though it did involve putting his GoPro camera inside one.
Sharing a video of his findings, he explained how modern disposal units actually work - and they aren't just blenders in your sink.
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"I was shocked to hear it vaporized basically anything without using any blades at all. My whole life I thought it worked like a blender with spinning blades," YouTuber Povs Adventures shared.
But modern garbage disposals do not work this way.
He explained: "Turns out the way it works is there's a spinning plate and two blunt impaler logs.
"When you drop the food down the sink and hit the disposal on the spinning plate rotates at such a high speed that the impalers smash the food into tiny fragments while centrifugal forces drives it to the outside grind ring."
The YouTuber was able to capture this thanks to his tiny Insta360 camera, which he bravely clipped just above the unit's obliterating lugs as he rammed various objects into the sink to show its effect. Naturally, the video stunned non-Americans, with one calling the US 'literally the only country that has a lethal weapon down their sink'.
But there were also frequent comments about how crazy the long-used technology is, with one viewer saying: "As a non american, it always amazes me that you have garbage disposals. They are soo cool."
The reason that many other, Europeans in particular, do not have a garbage disposal unit is historical, due to many countries' plumbing systems are too old to deal with the additional fat and food matter. Users commented that they thought Americans were putting any old trash down their sinks, rather than the waste unit being used for scraps and other detritus.
One said: "I’m still shocked that these things exist. Living in Australia, my leftovers go in the bin (which keep getting smaller because the local council hates us).
"Where does the food even go? Does it follow the same water pipes?"
However, many Americans who had been burned after their unit broke down implored people to avoid using theirs as much as possible, and not stuffing cucumbers and cameras into it, as Povs Adventures had done.
One lucratively employed person added: "As a plumber, keep doing stuff like that. Keeps me working."