The grinding machine in so many American sinks has a surprisingly specific origin story, and it runs through a town of about 1,200 homes in southern Indiana.

According to the Indiana Magazine of History, as retold by Indiana Public Media, Jasper had two problems in the late 1940s. In 1945, the state ordered the town to stop dumping raw sewage into the Patoka River. Then in 1947, a swine cholera epidemic hit area farms, and investigators traced it to garbage being fed to pigs.

The mayor, Herbert Thyen, spotted a possible answer while shopping with his wife: an electric garbage disposer in a store window. The town brought in General Electric to put a disposer in every home. At public meetings, residents were urged not to be the last house on the block with a rotting garbage can. The mayor personally visited some of the loudest opponents. By mid-February 1950, more than 800 of Jasper’s 1,200 homes had signed up.

That’s when the flyer appeared, with a cartoon housewife shutting her door on the garbage man: “Garbage is Illegal in Jasper.” It was a company flyer, not a law.

Federal and state health officials came to watch. The new sewage system handled the extra load, and by the 1960s many towns, Jasper included, passed ordinances requiring disposers in new and renovated homes.

Here’s where the sources split. Indiana Public Media says Jasper “never lost its garbage collectors.” The design podcast 99% Invisible, in its episode “The Monster Under the Sink,” says the town stopped picking up food waste, while still collecting things like cans and plastics. Both can be partly true, since trash pickup and food-scrap pickup are different things, but we couldn’t settle exactly what residents could still put out, so we’re showing you both.

Sunday Home

Try this at home

Whatever goes down your disposer ends up in the sewer or septic system, so the thing to keep out is grease. An EPA report to Congress found grease, from restaurants, homes and industry combined, was the most common cause of reported sewer blockages: 47%. Grease solidifies as it cools. Let pan fat cool, scrape it into the trash, and wipe the pan before washing.

Do you have a disposer, and would you ever go back to living without one?

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Sources

Everything above is checked against these. Open any of them.

  1. Indiana Public Media, Moment of Indiana History, “Talking Trash in Jasper” (Aug 12, 2013; by the staff of the Indiana Magazine of History, based on Suellen Hoy, IMH June 1986)https://www.ipm.org/show/momentofindianahistory/talking-trash-jasper
  2. Built on: 99% Invisible, ep. 574, “The Monster Under the Sink” (2024)https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-monster-under-the-sink/
  3. EPA, “Controlling Fats, Oils, and Grease Discharges from Food Service Establishments,” citing EPA’s 2004 Report to Congress (EPA-833-R-04-001), 47%https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-02/documents/pretreatment_foodservice_fs1.pdf

Next story

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