Besides broken pipes and the resulting damage, human safety is a factor and people would have to be evacuated. But pulverizing trash isn't always a smooth process. The three-person crew must sort through the waste looking for items that don't belong, such as car parts and small appliances. A stray piece of metal can seriously damage the equipment. The crew has a display showing some of the items people have carelessly tossed in the recyclable bins.
Dirty diapers are pretty nasty.
The machine eats about three and a half tons of waste an hour, and no matter how hard they try, they can't catch everything. One item that slipped through in 1997, a lighter, started a fire. The fire was then carried down the conveyor belt. No one was injured, but there was some structure damage. Two other fires have occurred.