Most of us only have one plumbing drain pipe that runs to the sewer. All of our disposer waste goes through it along with toilet water. Well if we don’t we should consider that it is the case and here is why. Our sewer system is overloaded and the rivers in Milwaukee smell like toilets. The water will make you sick or dead if you swim in it.
We would probably have to wait forever until the problem is fixed on a large scale so that our sewer system could handle all the overflow without dumping it into the Milwaukee River.
So what can we do in the meantime? When I worked in the kitchen of a local restaurant during High School the basement had large plastic barrels in it. They were called slop buckets. And that is where we put the waste we scraped off the plates before the plates were rinsed and put through the industrial dishwasher. A service came and picked the waste up.
You can do something very similar in your home that would greatly improve our water quality. It is very simple and you will need two items. One a five gallon bucket from hardware store with a sealable lid. You will place this in your kitchen. It can even be placed under your sink; behind the cabinet doors there. The other item you need is a galvanized metal garbage can with a metal lid. You will also need to take a rope or chain to tie the lid onto the can so that animals cannot come in the middle of the night and knock it over.
The process is very simple. Put the vegetable scraps in the bucket in your kitchen and when the bucket becomes near to being full dump it in the garbage can outside and tie the lid on. Keep an eye on the one outside and add grass clippings and mix it in with it so that you will have a good consistency.
The process is very simple. Put the vegetable scraps in the bucket in your kitchen and when the bucket becomes near to being full dump it in the garbage can outside and tie the lid on. Keep an eye on the one outside and add grass clippings and mix it in with it so that you will have a good consistency.
I did this and did not have any problem with spontaneous combustion, I think the key is to make sure it is always kept the right consistency and the metal lid does not have a chance of coming off. For this to happen you need a source of oxygen to fuel the fire. And the lid is fairly tight and secure. The slop buckets in the restaurant I worked for sat there for a while and restaurants don’t have this problem to the best of my knowledge. But if you are not careful and keep an eye on it, it could be a remote risk. So keep it away from the house and check on it. I think you will find the same thing I do. Don’t do anything stupid like put hot coals in it. This is just pure vegetable waste. Anyway it is your risk not mine. Old lady's have been known to spontaneously combust and no one knows why.
What you will find is that the slop will go down in volume as it decays. It will become soupy so add a little raked grass clipping to help keep the consistency just right. At the end of the summer or when the mixture has become evenly decayed, you then dig up your garden and till it in. It makes an excellent garden fertilizer.
To prepare my garbage can I primed the interior and caulk sealed the lower metal fold and the one running up the side so that it did not leak.
After that I enjoyed painting it with an ecological scene.
This is a small step that each of us can take to help keep our water clean. The responsibility for clean water has been neglected by our government. So both the risk and responsibilty are ours now.
Thomas Paul Murphy
Copyright 2011 Thomas Paul Murphy
Copyright 2011 Thomas Paul Murphy
Originally published at: www.themilwaukeeandwisconsinnews.blogspot.com
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