Here’s why a Vancouver councillor wants to see a ban on garburators

Vancouver will consider a motion restricting in-sink garbage disposals. Here’s why one councillor thinks the city should get rid of them entirely.

A Vancouver councillor is hoping to move the city closer to banning the use of in-sink garbage disposals to get rid of food waste that ought to be composted instead.

Green Coun. Pete Fry’s motion “A Drain on Resources and Resources Down the Drain: Pulling the Plug on In-Sink Garbage Disposal” is set to come to council this week and notes other cities including Victoria, Toronto, Kingston and Squamish already have bans in place.

“Garburators were once very in-fashion and the idea was that you could just grind your organic waste, and it would just disappear down the drain,” Fry told CTV News.

But it doesn’t disappear, he said, it ends up in wastewater treatment plants where it puts a strain on the infrastructure.

“It actually cost us, and it costs us all,” Fry said, pointing to the ballooning cost of the Northshore Wastewater Treatment Plant as an example of why taxpayers and residents ought to be concerned with what is flowing through those facilities.

One of the issues Fry points to is that food waste can contain fats and oils which congeal into so-called “fatbergs.” Fry notes Metro Vancouver spends millions per year clearing the costly clogs.

The motion, Fry explained, is two-fold.

First, it encourages public education about the impact of using in-sink garbage disposals to get rid of food waste and to promote composting instead.

“If we can mitigate and minimize the amount of organic material that has to be screened and removed from the system, it’s probably a good thing for us,” he said.

Second, it seeks to ban garburators in all new builds in the city by amending the building bylaw.

The end goal, Fry said, is to “just eliminate them altogether.”

The councillor noted that Vancouver considered a ban in 2017 but did not implement one.

Council will vote on the motion Wednesday.

With files from CTV New Vancouver’s Isabella Zavarise