Why Pumpkin Pulp And Garbage Disposals Don’t Mix

Halloween is coming up pretty soon, which means it’s time to start carving pumpkins! Plenty of people love to create spooky jack-o-lanterns or cut artsy silhouettes into pumpkins to create distinctive decorations for the holiday. Whatever you choose to cut into the outside of your pumpkins, you’re going to want to open it up and dig out all the pulpy, sticky guts. Where should all that pulp go? Definitely not down your in-sick garbage disposal!

The Problem With Pumpkin Pulp

The innards of a pumpkin are slithery and slimy, and it’s hard to imagine that they’d do anything except slip straight down the drain if you put them down the sink. This is simply not the case. While pumpkin pulp is slippery and slimy, it’s also very sticky and stringy. It’s all too easy for a bit of pulp to stick to a pipe, and because the stuff is so stringy, that one anchorage will allow a lot of pulp to hold on. Over time, it will harden in place and turn into a hard-to-remove obstruction.

Pumpkin + Garbage Disposal = Trouble

Things aren’t any better if you think your in-sink garbage disposal will make pumpkin pulp any easier to get rid of. While the disposal blades will shred a bit of the pulp, they can’t alter its inherently sticky nature. Pumpkin pulp causes even more problems when you put it down a sink with a disposal unit because the pulp can harden and gum up both the disposal and the pipes beneath it. The results are going to be blockages, clogs, and possibly even a damaged disposal unit. Once pumpkin pulp befouls your pipes, you’ll have to call in a professional plumber to remove it and remedy the situation.

The Right Way To Dispose Of Pumpkin Pulp

* Don’t use a toilet as an alternate route for disposal. While toilets can flush pumpkin pulp down alright, the sticky, stringy material poses the same clogging threat to the pipes that drain them.

* If you have a compost heap or bin, that’s the perfect place for pumpkin pulp. If you’re a gardener, you can even wash and dry the seeds and save them to plant next year.

* If you don’t do any composting, simply bag up pumpkin pulp and throw it out with the garbage.

Carving pumpkins is a wonderfully fun Halloween tradition. Calling Alto Sewer to snake pumpkin guts out of your sink is a lot less fun. Dispose of pumpkin pulp properly to save yourself from this sort of hassle!