What do you do with your grease/fat/oil?

[Fat Guy]

I confess I usually just pour it down the drain and run hot water for a while until I'm confident it's all out of the system.

[Chris Hennes]

I have read (someplace) that you aren't supposed to dump it down the drain because it forms a slick on the surface of the water in the treatment facilities. This is bad, for some reason that escapes me...

At any rate, I save the container the oil is from or use an empty gallon milk jug, fill it with the cooled oil, and throw it in the trash.

[rooftop1000]

We have a septic system....I make a newspaper cone and pour it in there, then into the trash can

[Kerry Beal]

Compost for me.

[petite tête de chou]

I believe it's a less-than-great idea to pour it down the drain with a long, hot water chaser but I've done it. Usually I pour it into a large coffee can or milk jug and toss it in the trash. Neither of these solutions appeal to me at all. I'm not sure what else to do!

[Magictofu]

I fill an empty can until its full and then dump it.

[Holly Moore]

A little club soda, a wedge of lime ...

Actually I dump it down the sewer opening on the corner if liquid. Into the garbage if solid.

[Magictofu]

You could burn the oil in a basic oil/grease lamp but the smell might not be appreciated by most people.

[Andrew Fenton]

I have read (someplace) that you aren't supposed to dump it down the drain because it forms a slick on the surface of the water in the treatment facilities. This is bad, for some reason that escapes me...

It's worse than that. As I understand it, as grease cools, it clogs the sewers. Grease clogs are the bane of sewer departments: cleaning it is the most difficult and dirty thing they have to do. In lots of cities (including New York, at least for businesses), it's illegal, and it's definitely a bad thing to do in general.

If I have a little bit of grease, I'll wipe it up with a paper towel and toss it. If I have a lot, I'll pour it into an empty yogurt container or whatever and toss that.

[JimH]

Everything but bacon grease gets poured into a jar and tossed into the trash when full. Bacon grease is stored in a jar in the frig until I need to fry something or cook cornbread in cast iron.

[KingLear]

I used to set the tap water to hot and pour it down the drain.

Thankfully, things have changed for the better here in the part of Ontario in which I live. Not only do we have a great recycling program, but we now have a green bin program. We put all our food scraps, including bones and oil, as well as used facial tissue, paper towels, dryer lint, dog hair and the like, into biodegradable bags that are then placed in a small green bin. It's picked up once a week for compost.

Great program.

[project]

Fireplace, but while being careful!

[Pierogi]

Being inherently cheap, and living in a circa 1940's house with corresponding plumbing........

Also, having been thoroughly indoctrinated by my Dad that "grease doesn't go down the drain......."

I have what we here in Southern California, at least amongst my circle, call the "Surprise de Trashman" or SdeT. Its a large jar, with a tight lid (commercial pasta sauce jars are the BEST) that lives in a corner of the freezer and gets all pourable quantities of any grease (except bacon, or Please God, duck) dumped into it when cool, re-lidded, and then re-stashed in the freezer.

When full, it gets a sticky note posted somewhere I can see that says "SdeT" to remind me to deposit it into the trash bin on the morning of pickup, so it stays frozen and doesn't slime my huge, city-issued trash bin, thus causing me to waste water to wash the darn thing out.

My mom used an empty tin can with an aluminum foil lid. I like to think my generation has improved the concept. The usual life-span of my "SdeT" jar is at least 3 or 4 months. Then its time to buy more jarred pasta sauce.

[pax]

You'd be surprised how popular a big block of frozen fat is with the birds. When cool, I pour it into milk or cream cartons, add some seeds, shake, and stick them in the garage where they freeze solid. When I feel like it, I put it out on the bird feeder and it's usually gone within days.

In the summer time it gets composted, which is exactly what compost people will tell you not to do. My feeling is I do not need my stuff to be done rotting in a big hurry so I throw everything biodegradable in there because it all breaks down in the end.

[sparrowgrass]

Please don't put any oil, cooking or automotive, into the storm drains. Those go directly to the nearest creek and eventually end up in the ocean. Not good for the birdies and beasties and little wigglies.

I suppose the best ecologically would be to save it in a jar or can and take it to your local restaurant and ask if you can put it into their waste fat collection.

[LVic]

No coffee cans or milk cartons in our house, only (narrow-mouthed) gallon milk jugs.

But we've found that the wide-mouthed carafes of Simply Orange o.j. are such good containers that we always keep an empty one in the pantry for any frying occasion (3-4 during Xmas and new years', when we engage in a sinful amount of torrid deep-frying!)

[flacoman]

I take it when it's still hot and immolate unsuspecting weeds!

After it cools , a fistfull of coffee grounds and grass seed

HTH

Jorge

[dougal]

The drain is a bad place for it.

It will compost, but the risk is attracting vermin.

It goes on a garden bonfire, and oil-burning stoves can be modified to use it.

In winter, wild bird feeding is a good idea.

But way better than sending it to landfill would be to make biodiesel from it, or pass it to someone that else that makes the stuff. Some local producers collect used oil from restaurants and take-aways. Here's one USA example (in Houston of all places) http://www.summitrecyclers.com/wvo_recycling.html Some may operate "drop off" schemes where non-bulk quantities can be accumulated for economical collection.

"Waste vegetable oil" itself, after progressively finer filtering and de-watering can be used as diesel fuel substitute/additive, even without the biodiesel conversion. This however is very dependent on the diesel injector design. Older, more agricultural designs fare better. Mercedes diesels over about a dozen years old are probably favourite! Using cleaned WVO as diesel fuel is best as a summer thing - cold, it doesn't flow so well and is a pain to start. Hence the marketing of 'conversions' that start the vehicle on fossil diesel, before changing over to WVO once the engine is warm, which in turn facilitates the preheating of the WVO so that it flows better through the injectors.

Making biodiesel from WVO is a much more benign process than ploughing up rainforest to make way for palm oil plantations.

http://www.greenhealthwatch.com/newsstorie...estructive.html

And its so much better than tipping an asset, quite literally, "down the drain".

[pax]

The drain is a bad place for it.

It will compost, but the risk is attracting vermin.

Making biodiesel from WVO is a much more benign process than ploughing up rainforest to make way for palm oil plantations. 

http://www.greenhealthwatch.com/newsstorie...estructive.html

And its so much better than tipping an asset, quite literally, "down the drain".

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Well, anytime you compost, you could get vermin. The key is to contain the compost in a safe place.

I have a Ford diesel truck and I just cannot bring myself to pour homemade fuel into it. I will pass this post along to my husband, Professor Flubber, and let him think about it. Maybe we could experiement with the tractor, which is a poc anyway and if it died, well, good, because then I can get a real dang tractor and stop dinking around with this one.

[Edward J]

Please, please, pretty please do NOT put FOGS (fats, oils, greases) down the drain.

True, you might succesfully flush it out of your home's plumbing system, but it will clog up the city's/municipality's main sewer system. These boys do not like this, and sewer maintenence/repair (huge list of demands from the Worker's Comp board about who and how many go down there, what type of equipment is to be worn, how many to stand by in case of emergency/pass out) is very costly. It is fairly easy to see which home's line that the FOGS comes from, and they will send a "snake" or cable equipped with a video camera head to inspect lines. Then they fine....

Best thing, according to many city officials--from health to plumbing to enviromental--is to pour the FOGS into a container and place it into the garbage. Alternatively you can find a used oil dumpster behind many restaurants and dump it in there where it willbe recycled.

[Magictofu]

You'd be surprised how popular a big block of frozen fat is with the birds. When cool, I pour it into milk or cream cartons, add some seeds, shake, and stick them in the garage where they freeze solid. When I feel like it, I put it out on the bird feeder and it's usually gone within days.

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I love the idea and will be improving my disposal technique starting tonight! Thanks.

[RAHiggins1]

I save large coffee cans and pour the oil/grease into it once its cooled and put it in the freezer until the can is full, then I toss it out with the trash but I'll be making suet since reading about it here. The exception being bacon grease, that goes in a bowl in the fridge to be used in something else.

[HungryC]

I take it when it's still hot and immolate unsuspecting weeds!

After it cools , a fistfull of coffee grounds and grass seed

HTH

Jorge

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Oh, man, this brings back memories. My grandma used to pour her used cooking oil onto weeds along the fenceline; it worked like a charm, though it will attract roaming neighborhood dogs.

I pour mine into the compost heap, but I have learned to dig down a bit before pouring it in, and then cover it well. Otherwise the yard cats think it's a snack and subsequently barf up greasy compost on my patio.

Pouring it down the drain will only make you the plumber's best customer.

Edited January 15, 2009 by HungryC (log)

[Beebs]

If it's only a little bit of grease or fat, I wipe with a paper towel and toss it in the bin. If it's a lot, I cool it in the freezer or fridge, then put it in one of those small plastic baggies that you get vegetables in and have absolutely no other use for (double bag it if there's a lot), then toss it in the bin. If it's oil, depending on how much I'm disposing, it either goes into a plastic baggy or a plastic container/can after it's cooled.

[Toliver]

I confess I usually just pour it down the drain and run hot water for a while until I'm confident it's all out of the system.

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The problem is that hot water doesn't stay hot for very long when it goes down drain pipes due to heat dissapation. This was mentioned in another eGullet discussion a while back. You end up down a length of the pipes with just tepid or cool water and grease/fat/oil. Not a good combination as mentioned by other posters.

My parents also drummed into me as a child to never put it down the drain. Always have a container handy and dump it ino the trash when it gets full.