After you’ve fried the rooster or sautéed the veggies, don’t pour the leftover cooking oil down the drain. Whereas it’d seem harmless, pouring used oil down the drain can wreak havoc in your personal house’s plumbing and native sewage methods.
Within the occasion you’re not already gathering leftover cooking oil in a container beside the vary — equivalent to Grandma —chances are high excessive your drain has some substantial buildup. Though it’s liquid, oil, like grease, clings to pipes in small particles that latch onto each other, gathering until you will have a clogged drain — or worse. In fact, cooking oil and kitchen grease are a severe clarification for fatbergs that clog sewer pipes.
Plumbers will let you understand to pour leftover cooking oil and grease into an outdated can, jar, or plastic jug, and when it’s cooled, merely seal the container and toss it inside the trash. Nevertheless there’s another option to throwing it out.
Recycle Cooking Oil for Completely different Gasoline
That’s correct, your used cooking oil may be refined into one other gasoline, or biofuel, that burns clear in most diesel engines. Whereas many enterprise companies already contribute substantial supplies of oil for recycling, some functions invite households to recycle their additional cooking oil as correctly.
Use Earth911 Recycling Search to find a recycling location near you that accepts cooking oil. Moreover, some biofuel or biodiesel corporations may current additional drop-off locations spherical food-related holidays, akin to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah, so take profit.
Ensure you confirm with the recycler for his or her requirements for oil storage and preparation and adjust to their suggestions. Mainly, don’t mix any water with the oil, try and filter out bits of meals floating inside the fat, and retailer the oil in a tightly sealed container.
You assume filtering bits of meals out of outdated oil sound gross? It’s not as harmful as having to clean out your clogged drains later!
Editor’s Observe: Initially revealed on December 1, 2009, this textual content was updated in December 2024.