Theft ring took $4 million in used cooking oil

Who knew used cooking oil was so valuable??!!

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I would happily give it away for free to anyone willing to come by my house on a regular basis to collect this. Better you, than my poor drains.

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We actually have community collection points to relieve the load on the drains. I spent a short stint in the plumbing industry, and cost to clean out the enormous plugs formed by excess grease far exceeds the cost of running a collection program!

Its a big statement that something we used to throw out without a second thought has become so valuable.

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It is recycled for use as diesel fuel around here in our blue bubble.

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You shouldn’t pour cooking oil down the drain. It feeds noxious algae in the water supply. Here (Zurich) we can either bring it to a collection point or put in the garbage. Our garbage is incinerated.

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Wonderful solution. Unfortunately, here in the U.S. incinerators are considered demons. Better to just throw our sh#t into the sea, and let someone else deal with it.

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Nope. Here in West Central Florida, garbage incinerators actually contribute to power generation.

We’re kinda protective of our waters. We still screw up once in a while, but clean water is a thing here.

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Feeding noxious algae is the least of the worries caused by throwing fats down the drain. It is absolutely a problem, just not the biggest one.

The clogs and stoppage that congealed fats cause are an enormous problem, costing cities mikkions every year to clear the vile mess. Those clogs are soft, so they then catch solids and other flotsam tossed down the drain, leading to stopped sewers and worse (see London’s fatberg a few years ago)

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There are companies now sucking the fatbergs out of the sewers and refining them into biodiesel, but far easier to keep fat out of the sewer in the first place. I’ve cleaned the grease trap at my kitchen and it’s nasty enough without added human waste. I do not want to even imagine how that smells steaming hot :nauseated_face:

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The good news is that I don’t. I collect in a jar, and then it gets tossed with a ton of wrapping. That’s actually what our local agency recommends. But even with that, I still notice over time clogs can develop from the bits of leftover grease and oil from dishes, pots and pans when washed.

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I wipe out oily or buttery pans with paper towels before washing them. And I try, not entirely successfully, to keep any foodstuffs from going down the drain.

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In our area, Whole Foods has collection points for used cooking oil. Good for larger quantities. For lesser amounts, I save breakfast and lunch paper napkins and use them to wipe bacon or other big grease pans. I include them in our city sponsored compost, a small %age of our green output. Not sure there aren’t better solutions but this seems rather benign to me.

In our area, the recycling folks wont take paper thats been contaminated with grease.

I dont deep fry at home, so my excess grease is nearly zero.

I do this too. I started the practice years ago when I lived full time in an RV. You become extremely aware of your homes plumbing in that situation!

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Agree all around. We have recycling, which takes clean paper, glass and plastic, and compost, which takes food waste with a modicum of grease. Certainly no containers of grease.