Does anyone use in-sink garbage disposals anymore?

They shouldn't make a gross smelly area under your sink. It sounds like yours was leaking.

Or had a backflow issue

I went out of my way to get one installed in a house that didn't have one. So, yeah.

If yours is making a mess under the sink, it's either broken or installed wrong.

I use mine all the time, much easier than dealing with a nasty sink strainer as I just spray down the sink into the disposal and run it. Also keeps the trash from smelling.

If it's being smelly under the sink, it's broken or not installed right. If it's being smelly from the drain hole sink side then you're not cleaning it from time to time (Which is as easy as dropping in some cleaner and running it every other month or so).

I'm actually looking to upgrade mine so it can handle some bones

A cup full of ice cubes once a week keeps mine clean
The upgrade is so worth it. I got a 1hp one when I needed to replace the old one. I could probably send a whole rotisserie chicken down that thing without issue (other than destroying my plumbing anyways). I don't deliberately send bones down it but it has happened and they don't even slow it down.

They were never a thing in Europe.

The sewage treatment is not built to handle that kind of stuff. The sewage pipes aren't too happy about it, either. I might flush some carbs down the toilet. The poop-munching bacteria at the treatment plant get a nice growth boost from it. Grease not only clogs your own pipes, but causes issues for the whole city. I think it's possible to get fined for it if you'd get caught starting a year or two back.

Food waste goes in the trash or compost. If it goes in the trash it's burned at industrial temperatures to burn clean. The heat is used for district heating networks.

The sewage treatment is not built to handle that kind of stuff.

They're also not built to handle it in the US, but lower standards solve that problem pretty handily
Yeah, grease and oil kills plumbing

I’ve never not had one, do you scoop all your food waste out of the sink with your hands? Cleaning is as easy as dropping a lemon peel in once in a while or a tray of ice.

Big stuff straight into the trash. Little stuff into the sink strainer. It all settles to the middle of the strainer. Pick up the strainer and dump it into the trash.
- Does the debris ever clog the strainer? Sometimes the disposal gets clogged and holds filthy water in the sink, and I just run the disposal and it clears it all out. Otherwise you'd have to reach in and grab the strainer out and that's... Ew.

I use it all the time. Dump dishes into trash, rinse everything that sticks off in sink, grind up all the food bits from that in the disposal, put dishes in dish washer.

It's only gonna get gross and smelly under your sink if something is wrong with the disposal. And if you're not throwing a shit ton of garbage down it, just the little bits that wash off when doing dishes, it's not likely to break or get clogged.

Didn't grow up with one, but consider it standard now. There should be an organic stream to waste disposal. Much more green to send your plate scrapings to the treatment plant than to wrap them up in plastic and bury it in a landfill.

ive never lived in a house or apt without one. they seem ubiquitous to me. seems weird there wouldnt be one.

Lol what? They are ubiquitous as ever.

As a Canadian, the idea of a garbage disposal in a sink has always been insane to me. It can be hard to believe that Americans just grind up stuff and send it down their sink drain.

You're a biological garbage disposal and your shit goes down the same sanitary sewer line. It's just food scraps like peels, stems, and trimmings. Hardly qualifies as 'insane'.
There are very few things that make me proud to be American, but I do love when people from other countries are horrified by "normal" American stuff.

It is quite convenient, though, and better than food going to a landfill. (although composting is still preferable)
What's insane about it? You eat food and your waste goes to the sewer. The garbage disposal does the same just without it passing through you. Also they're only really used for scraps (egg shells, vegetable peels/trimmings, bits from rinsing dishes, etc) it isn't like you're dumping a whole plate of spaghetti down your sink. If you don't have room for composting then the only alternative is throwing that stuff in the trash.

Food waste goes to compost!

I've always had one in every place I live. Even the shitty apartment I had one was installed.

We have one, I like it. Never gross smelling, keeps the drains clear, seems to help the dishwasher run better.

My house had the cheapest garbage disposal which I quickly broke. When I went to replace it, I found that replacing them is incredibly easy and the mid-tier model (about $120) said it could handle small beef bones and peach pits. I've been very happy with that, and all my food waste goes in. I don't have a lot of room for compost, but the city purports to be generating electricity from the sewage, so I hope it isn't wasted. It also means that my trash doesn't smell, which is nice.

Are they easy to self-install? I still have a bit of new owner "shit I'm responsible for everything, better not fuck it up" mentality.
- Yeah, they're pretty easy as long as you already have the outlet under the sink. The hardest part is maneuvering the drain pipe into place. Once you have it in place there's just two or three nuts you need to tighten. If you're really worried about it, you can stick a bucket under it for a couple days it to check for leaks. I'd say it's a pretty good project to get an intro to plumbing. In the worst case if you get in over your head, you can call a plumber to come in and finish it, and they'll get it done within half an hour.
- Easy to replace? sure. A couple hours if your handy.
  
  But installing one for the first time will require electrical in addition to the and plumbing work. It's a pretty big job for a DIYer.
- Two seals (sink and drain) and a power cord.

Never ever lived in a place with one, and I've lived in probably a dozen places in my life

Almost impossible to get a condo in my area without one. I do use a mesh but I know from experience I have to run it once a month or it might rust out or something. Washing machine drains to it to.

Washing machine drains to it to.

I hope you mean the dishwasher…
- Depending on where they are, a washing machine in the kitchen might be a thing. It's very common in the UK, for example.
- yeah sorry. dishwasher.

Most garbage disposals just cause more trouble that they're worth since they turn small chunks of food into paste and that's more likely to stick to the insides of drains and cause more clogs than the small chunks, as long as your drains are properly maintained. And a halfway decent strainer will keep out the larger pieces. It's also not good for your city drains and makes sewage processing more expensive. Better to use composting for your food scraps if you can.

I compost (and save stuff for broth) and we have a sink disposal. It's for the little bits of cooked food left on plates, are you composting those? The sink that has one is the least cloggy kitchen sink I've ever had, and as far as I understand they are pretty neutral in terms of waste stream.

Grease I agree shouldn't go in there, that goes in the trash.

I worked in apartment maintenance for a bit. That is a requirement for low income housing, at least in California. If it doesn't have one or it stops working for any reason, the tenant can claim unlivable living conditions and not pay rent until it's fixed. This is true for many types of problems but you asked about garbage disposals. Also the property could potentially lose the designation of low income housing which means losing the federal/state subsidy. Most tenants don't know about this and choose to move out instead after a few rent increases. On the other hand there is a list of "problem tenants" that landlords share and if you end up on it then good luck finding a new place to rent.

I found a solid metal strainer, not mesh for my sink. Holds up forever and much easier to clean. Even if you have a disposal, its not great to just dump everything down the drain [citation needed]. You especially want to catch things like small bones and forks.

The disposals seem common enough, a lot older/outdated homes don't have them. I have no idea what they're putting into new houses and renovations.

Never had an under the sink mess like you describe, maybe yours just had a small leak?

Pretty sure they just mean that it can get stinky in there

They seem more common now if anything

I’m not sure what extra cleaning you’re talking about but if you use them once in a while they don’t stink

They’re not legal where I live. Something about our sewage lines or treatment center not being able to handle it if I recall correctly. I have a clog resistant drain strainer that I clean out every time I rinse dishes in the sink instead.

I share your opinion. When I bought my house, ripping out the garbage disposal and putting in a normal drain was one of the first things I did.

I used to have one, but everything I'd use it for should really be going in the compost, not the sewer.

I have never not had one

I had one in most of the apartments I lived in, but I was always having problems with them and needing to contact the landlord to fix it (some of this was my fault but still). Now that I have my own place I'm not going to install one, I don't want to spend money if the result is mostly to get to maintain yet another thing, just to avoid shaking a drain trap over the trash every once in a while.

I find they're pretty ubiquitous where I'm from. I had one in every apartment I've lived in. I don't have one in my house though.

I know a lot of people will just dump a lot of food waste in there. After struggling with it, I started just throwing out all of the waste and using the garbage disposal for the small bits of food that would normally get caught in the sink strainer.

Now that I'm back to living in a place with no garbage disposal, I do miss it a little. The sink strainer is a bit gross to handle. But it's also pretty nice not having to maintain the garbage disposal so it all evens out.

What maintenance? I had to fish broken glass out of mine once, but otherwise I’ve never had to mess with it.
- Very small things, but still things I needed to remember to do. Running it every day. Making sure to clean it every week. (Ice or garbage disposal cleaner) If I didn't clean it, even after running it every day, it would smell. When my partner would clog it, I would have to fix it. (Again, it took little time.) Making sure nothing fell in there before I ran it every time. I would often find my measuring spoons or a fork in there. (It doesn't really seem to matter to my family how many times I tell them not to leave small things in the sink.)
  
  I recognize this is very little and it's basically nothing for most people, but sometimes I have a very hard time keeping up with things and the garbage disposal is very out of sight, out of mind. The sink strainer is very visible.

My condo has one. I use it.

Never had one, and can't think of ever having seen one.

Currently live in a condo, I think every unit in the building came with one

The biggest advantage I could find is that they are insanely convenient for making French press coffee! French presses are otherwise a pain to clean (since there's no filter to aggegate the grounds), but having an in-sink disposal means I can just flush the coffee grounds directly into the sink. Besides this though I'm pretty indifferent to them

Serious question: don't these things not just, like, grind shit up and send it down the drain? Coffee grounds are already, well, ground up. I flush them all the time.
- ... which is why I never considered French press "inconvenient"... but from what I've heard from other coffee enthusiasts, they all found French press inconvenient precisely because they don't just pour the grounds down the drain & had to dispose it in the trash bin (and deal with the mess). Maybe I'm ill-informed somewhere, maybe something else... I'm not against just flushing the grounds though.

I had one once, here in Australia, in a house my family lived in for a few years. It was novelty as I'd never seen one before or since.I seem to recall thinking it was very useful but for some reason, even though there's really no chance of it happening, I always had like intrusive thoughts of sticking my fingers in there. Also my grandpa stayed with us for a little while and he kept throwing nectarine cores in there which it really couldn't handle even though we asked him not to. It also used to make a deafening noise like the awakening of Cthulhu at rhe best of times, hearing it sound like it was about to spectacularly break was really distressing. I don't know how legal it was to have that thing, they just don't seem to exist here in Australia so it was very odd that this place had it.

I can take it or leave it. I rarely turn it on, and only if its draining slowly. I do not use it purposely for food waste, and honestly don't know why anyone would.

I've had to clean out some nasty clogged pipes before that handled sink waste. Maybe if everyone saw what kind of lovely buildup accumulates nobody would use these things.

Edit: nothing like "someone is wrong on the Internet" brings all the boys to the yard. I'll stand by my statement because I'm the one who personally snaked over 5 gallons of congealed sludge from the waste pipe in my tiny crawlspace. I didn't live there long enough and use the disposal enough to explain it, and it wouldn't have happened if there was no disposal to add that much solid matter over the years. So I personally don't care if I have one or not since I do the maintenance for free, but I'll continue to question why they're even a thing.

Using it regularly for a few seconds when food falls in means no clogged pipes, because it breaks food waste down to a size that is easily flushed down the pipes. If you wait until it gets clogged then you are doing it wrong.
If your pipes are getting gummed up from it then you aren't using it often enough or using enough water when you do use it. I do all my own plumbing and I've used mine for 6 years now without any issue. Hell, I think that sink is the only sink in my house that has never clogged.
Green Gobbler or equivalent is great for the bio waste. My family tries to stuff chicken carcasses down the damn thing, I swear.

I grew up with and around them but they're generally not a thing here in Japan. I'm trying to compost all my organics and such anyway and most things can go into compost.