After frying chicken or stir-frying vegetables, do not pour leftover cooking oil down the drain. It may seem harmless, but pouring used oil down the drain can cause major damage to your home’s plumbing and local sewer system.
If you’re not already collecting leftover cooking oil in a container next to the stove like your grandmother did, there’s a good chance you’ve accumulated a significant amount of grease in your drain. Despite being a liquid, grease-like oil is small particles that stick together and stick to pipes, collecting until they clog drains or worse. In fact, cooking oil and kitchen grease are main causes A lump of fat that clogs a drain pipe.
Plumbers will instruct you to pour leftover cooking oil and grease into old cans, bottles, or plastic containers, let them cool, seal the containers, and dispose of them in the trash. But there is an alternative to throwing it away.
Recycle Cooking Oil into Alternative Fuel
Yes. Used cooking oil can be refined into an alternative fuel or biofuel that burns cleanly in most diesel engines. Although many commercial establishments already supply significant quantities of oil for recycling, some programs encourage households to also recycle surplus cooking oil.
Use the Earth911 Recycling Search to find a recycling location near you that accepts cooking oil. Also some bio fuel or biodiesel Companies may offer additional drop-off locations for food-related holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah, so take advantage of these.
Contact your recycler for oil storage and preparation requirements and follow their instructions. In general, do not mix oil and water, strain out any food particles floating in the fat, and store the oil in a tightly sealed container.
Do you think straining food particles from old grease is gross? It’s not as bad as having to clear a clogged drain later!
Editor’s note: First published on December 1, 2009, This article was updated in December 2024.
