Couldn't one trap a Black Pudding or other ooze and allow garbage and waste in sewer systems to funnel into them, to be dissolved and destroyed?

Black Pudding: The creature secretes a digestive acid that dissolves organic material and metal quickly, but does not affect stone.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ooze.htm

Absolutely, in one city they use Gelatinous Cubes at night and caretakers sweep th ecity streets and alleys, collecting the metal the Cubes collect.

Alternatively, a sphere of annihilation at the bottom of a garbage chute is a tried and true method of high fantasy waste disposal.

A few modules I've seen, even as far back as the early 80s, included ooze-based disposal systems in dungeons. Often as traps, like dropping heroes into incinerators in other genres.

&mag has a cute little article on just this subject on page 8.

http://www.and-mag.com/urban-adventures/

Anything that eats, by whatever method is going to have waste. Cubes leave metal behind, but they likely leave organic material behind, as well (although a good rain probably fixes that issue, no pun intended). Oozes will, too. It has to go somewhere unless you want it to pile up in Ooze lair. Or unless you want to ooze to grow quite large.

On the other hand, it's likely as processed, by that point, as any fertilizer you want. Maybe make them pets of some subterranean farmers? That would dispose of their waste materials, as well.

If I recall correctly, Gelatinous Cubes were designed as dungeon waste disposal creatures by a Mad Wizard^TM, which is why they're a convenient 10-foot cube, big enough to clean the average dungeon's 10-foot-wide hallways.

That is my recollection

In reply to tmagann (msg # 6):

That is precisely why I chose the Black Pudding b/c it does organic and metal.

I had not thought about the waste or the growing.

The monster descriptions don't say anything about them growing, and if they created waste, wouldn't they dissolve that too? :D haha

Great feedback guys! Thank you!

Just to throw my own two cents into this ooze, while tmagann has some good points, they're all based on the real-life principles of the Law of Conservation of Matter/Energy/Ooze. And, admittedly, while it may be fun for some people to make certain their D&D/LotR/Star Wars relies on those handy principles, they certainly don't have to because it's just as likely A Wizard Did It^TM. Maybe magic, a force beyond our current understanding of Earth and how it works, defies the laws of physics and so it doesn't have to care. Or maybe the Ooze is somehow like a Bag of Holding, where it all goes in but only what it wants actually comes out, which might be nothing because it might as well be infinite. You know, because magic.

So... in short, consider the realism if you want to. Or don't.

From the old module descriptions of Gelatinous Cube-infested areas, the suspicious lack of detritus was supposed to be the big clue to their presence.

That said, who ever said waste had to be solid? In a more realistic setting, perhaps a black pudding excretes an intert gas as waste? Maybe in a more technological game, a spike in atmospheric nitrogen levels could indicate the presence of black puddings for adventurers clever enough to check for it.

I haven't done the research recently, but you could look at how plants and fungi produce waste as comparison. Many ooze types are considered to be either single-celled organisms that are just really big, plant-based, or fungi.

Are those gas-waste producers, like NowhereMan was suggesting?

In reply to Tyr Hawk (msg # 10):

Palladium had a lovely spin on this whereby there was a specific dimension in the multiverse where rubbish went, because of magical resonance. It literally rained garbage