Can you put broken glass in a garbage disposal?

Answer 1

Yes you can, but it is a really DUMB idea. It does not sharpen anything, and disposer blades do not require sharpening. If they did the owners manual would say so and there would be businesses providing that service. There are none. It is a dumb idea because plumbers do have to work on Plumbing, sometimes dismantling the P-Trap to remove clogs. Getting cut by unexpected glass in the plumbing is dangerous enough, than add the sewage in the pipes directly into the wound makes for some very very potentially serious infection. Down the line, the city must service and clean out the collector lines, and finally at the sewage treatment plant, plumbers and mechanics must work on the same system, including pumps and aerator's. The raw sewage is digested by bacteria, but the glass remains glass, sharp and dangerous.

Only an idiot or somebody playing a very bad trick would intentionally put glass into the sewer system. It is like putting razor blades in Halloween candy, intending to hurt someone. It is devious. It is not funny. The best place for broken glass is the garbage. It goes to the landfill and is buried out of harms way.

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I'm not going to say that the other previous answers are out-right wrong... for the purposes of INTENTIONALLY putting every-day broken glassware into the disposal, I would agree with them and play it safe by *NOT* putting the glass into the disposal and instead putting it in the trash.

HOWEVER, that being said, I have learned from personal experience that you *CAN* indeed grind glass (or, at least, *tempered* glass) in the disposal but if it's very much you will have to do the grinding manually b/c the disposal will bind.

Here's the story: I was moving out of a condo that I had sold and I had until 6PM that night to get out and turn the key over to the new owners. I was busy cleaning while the movers were packing. At one point I had the large tempered-glass shelf that sits over the crispers on many fridges and I was holding it over the sink with a trickle of water and a sponge scrubbing it clean... I picked it up carefully to begin drying it but unfortunately must have applied just a bit too much torque and the thing shattered... at least 75% of it made it into my disposal while the other 25% (minus a few shards that had "exploded" and cleared the sink) had clumped up and was sitting in the drain to the disposal.

In shock, not knowing what to do, and in a panic because of the time factor I reached down to grab the glas that had bunched up in the drain and as soon as I touched it it all crumbled and fell into the disposal... so, at least 95% of a glass shelf measuring about 2.5 feet by 1.5 feet was now down inside my disposal!!!!!

Again, in a panic, I turned on the water and the disposal... and guess what??? IT GRINDED AWAY... for about 2 seconds and then the motor bound up on the glass!!!

So, I got the vaccuum out... no, not a Wet-Vac, just a standard regular home vaccuum with the hose adapter and sucked out all of the excess glass... and no, I wasn't shocked... I'm not exactly sure why one would expect to be shocked since the hose was plastic and the vaccuum was on the ground and not in a puddle of water and even though the sink has SOME water in it it didn't have puddles anywhere, just drops everywhere like after you drain the sink... in other words, no "standing water"... why would you be shocked unless maybe you are using an all metal vaccuum and are trying to suck up standing water???

OK, so I got all the excess glass out of the disposal (and my vaccuum still works great today... over 6 months later, and it's a fairly cheap model I bought at the local electronics store for about $200 over 10 years ago!!!

I tried grinding again, to no avail. So I got down under the sink and used an Allen wrench to manually turn the disposal... sure, it was hard at first, and I could only go back and forth in very small increments... but those incrments got bigger and bigger until finally I could complete a full revolution... then I turned it on and it started grinding and I sold the unit and 2 weeks later my agent followed up with the buyers' agent and NO COMPLAINTS!

I follow this story up with another example that I learned from my mom (after MY experience I called to tell her about it and she told me this experience SHE had):

When she was a young 20-something she moved into a newly remodeled house for rent. The landlord who was a general contractor and had just finished performing all of the remodelling was taking her around showing her all the new stuff and arrived at the kitchen sink. He asked her to take a few pieces of a broken Coke bottle once a month and drop them into the running disposal... he said it would keep the blades sharp and the ground up glass would keep the basket of the disposal clean.

In both my experience as well as my mom's, no glass shards were ejected and sent flying from the disposal... the process seemed relatively safe. Additionally, I forgot to add, at one point my disposal DID in fact "shut down" as one of the previous respondents mentioned... but on the bottom of the disposal near the key-hole where you use an Allen wrench to manually turn the disposal is usually a white or red button. Pressing this button in will reset the motor circuitry and your disposal will power on again. The button is, in fact, a circuit breaker. So, it's not likely you'll permenantly shut-down your disposal, but you might have to reset it's circuit breaker on the bottom. I've accidentally tripped that breaker once or twice in my life by just accidentally putting too much food down it at once and it's a very easy thing to reset; thus, no foul!

So, there you go... glass into the disposal seems to work relatively fine without major problems. No conjecturing here, these are real first-hand experiences...

Does that mean I shove a Coke bottle down my sink every month??? No, I'm not that brave! :) But I do know that if you accidentally drop some glass down there, it's not a show-stopper and it's entirely possible it *COULD* be helpful for your disposal!

Glass Down a Garbage DisposalThis is not a good idea, at best. If you're lucky enough to not have shards of glass being propelled at you then you will have the joy of replacing that unit. Typically the unit will shut down when objects that are foreign are put into it. BE CAREFUL!

And here is another FAQ Farmer confirming the sentiment:

No. You will make a bad thing worse. Just throw the glass away. If it's already in there due to a broken bottle or something, I would try vacumming the glass out with a WET DRY VAC! Don't use a regular household vacuum! You WILL electrocute yourself!

Answer 2

unless it has chemicals or bio-hazard materials on it, I would advise you recycle it