Home Grease Disposal?

[mudbug]

Just wondering how everyone disposes of their old grease from cooking...

cchiu,
Every grease is different in this house. Bacon grease is stored in in the fridge in a leftover can that has been washed and drained. Cans are tightly sealed for storage and dumped once a month. Bacon fat makes for great fried chicken.
Oils are cooled and drained into zip lock bags and then disposed of in the trash as soon as possible. It was much easier when I rented because I didn't care what went down the drain.

[lynne]

I have a mayo jar under the sink that gets the grease and oils. Always tightly covered--when it's full, it's gone!

[Bucky]

Mud, I keep an empty tin can in my freezer. When it's full it can be stored there until trash day.

[phatch]

Originally Posted by Angelina

cchiu,
It was much easier when I rented because I didn't care what went down the drain.

That's highly irresponsible of you, besides the tremendous cost of treating oils in the water.

Phil

[chrose]

Because my plumber was over yesterday I asked him about this. He approved what I do and that is that oils and grease of 1/3 cup or so and less get run down the drain with cold water, anything more than that goes in a can, frozen and discarded.

[phatch]

The plumber doesn't operate the sewer.

http://www.charmeck.org/Departments/...landgrease.htm

Besides the clog issues, fats in sewage treatment raise costs significantly if they're treatable at all.

http://brunswickga.org/nm/publish/grease.html

Grease that makes it to the treatment plant creates problems that interfere with proper treatment of sewage. The treatment plant uses biological processes to clean up the sewage. Fats, oils and grease are not treated by these processes. They actually interfere by coating the bacteria that do the work of cleaning the water. Since oil and grease naturally float, a lot of it passes through the plant and creates visible residue on the surface of receiving waters.

Locally, home discharged fats and oils increase the time in the bacterial digesters by 50%, decreasing treatment capacity and increasing operation costs of the sewage treatment.

Phil

[Jock]

I suspect that most fats disposed of down the residential kitchen sink never make it to the sewage treatment plants. The quantities are so small that the fat congeals and sticks to something long before it gets there. That's why the pipes plug up locally in the first place.

Here in San Francisco we have a City recycle/compost program and that's where my waste grease goes (what little there is of it.)

Jock

[Pinot]

I find my compost handles moderate quantities of grease seemingly without a problem . It will have to be closed off to vermin though.

Anything that doesn't make the compost bin goes in the trash . Those with babies - Disposable (used ) nappies soak up a heap in the liquid form and keeps it tidy for disposal.

[redace1960]

coffee can in the fridge, when it's full its outta here. some little bit goes on
the doggies food, too...keeps their fur nice.
can you imagine the days when you had to save it all- pig, cow, chicken, game, whatever- without refrigeration and then use it to
grease wagons, to make lye soaps, candles, lamp oils, etc? fonkay.

[chrose]

Based on this thread and Phils post, I have amended my ways. All waste grease and fats no matter how small go into a can and into the garbage.

[KCampbell]

Filter it, then "trans-esterify" it into bio diesel and run my car on it. We collect it from local restaurants too, as we don't generate enough to keep the car going at home.

Kevin