After we cook dinner, grease typically accumulates from the fat and oils within the elements we warmth up. This occurs once we cook dinner with oil, butter or fatty meals comparable to floor beef or bacon. This grease within the backside of the pan might go away you questioning what you need to do with it.
If you happen to’ve thought of disposing of it in your kitchen sink, Joe Mouawad, common supervisor of Japanese Municipal Water District, sternly recommends you do not.
“Fat, oils and grease (FOG) are extremely dangerous to our wastewater assortment system,” he says. “When FOG is poured down your drain, it rapidly hardens and causes blockages within the system.”
Any such blockage can wreak havoc in your pipes, and it is extraordinarily frequent. In response to New York Metropolis’s 2019 State of the Sewers report, 66% of sewer backups have been decided to be attributable to grease.
When grease from a number of pipes builds up, it may possibly additionally trigger one thing that UK sewage therapy firm Thames Water dubbed “fatbergs.” Suppose icebergs, however as an alternative of being made up of ice, a fatberg is fats, grease and rubbish (often wipes) that grow to be trapped in sewage drains after being disposed of via pipes. In 2017, Thames Water shared a video of an 820-foot, 130-ton fatberg in a sewage system, which took weeks and thousands and thousands of {dollars} to take away, as reported by the BBC.
Due to the multitude of points that built-up grease may cause, specialists warn in opposition to ever pouring any quantity of it down the drain. Here is all the pieces to learn about safely disposing of cooking grease.
Why is pouring cooking grease down the drain so dangerous?
Although grease might go down your drain in liquid type, the issues happen as soon as it cools and hardens, which is able to trigger blockages in your house’s sewer pipes and even “the primary pipelines underneath the road,” Mouawad says.
These particular sorts of blockages are “very troublesome to filter out and it blocks the circulate of wastewater via the system,” Mouawad provides. “If wastewater is blocked from flowing via the system, it may possibly again up, generally leading to a pricey repair inside your house.”
As soon as the grease is hardened in your pipes, it may possibly additionally type a “sludge” that continues to develop as further liquids and meals particles go down the drain.
“A FOG clog can result in a sewage backup not simply in your house, but in addition exterior, the place it may possibly contaminate our bodies of water,” Mouawad says.
Learn how to get rid of cooking grease
As a result of cooking grease hardens when it cools, you possibly can pour the grease right into a disposable container, comparable to a can, jar or takeout container, and look ahead to it to harden, then throw it within the trash. And, no, cooking grease, lard and extra oil cannot be composted.
Alternatively, you possibly can pressure any meals particles from the grease and retailer it within the fridge for future use whereas cooking.
Learn extra: Learn how to Use Leftover Bacon Grease Like a Professional
There are many methods to reuse your bacon grease, from seasoning your forged iron skillet to flavoring your burgers.
What to do in case you by accident pour grease down your drain
If you happen to inadvertently pour grease down your drain, Mouawad says, you need to take “fast motion.”
“Rinse the drain with highly regarded water combined with a beneficiant quantity of degreasing dish cleaning soap to maintain it from solidifying,” he says.
Consider, nonetheless, that this is not a everlasting resolution and that you just should not consider it as a technique to hold pouring grease down the drain.
“If you happen to proceed pouring FOG down the drain, no quantity of degreasing goes to save lots of your pipes,” Mouawad says. “Ultimately you’ll be pressured to name in an expert to see how a lot injury has been carried out. This could be a pricey drawback and one which impacts different programs all through your house.”
