How to dispose of cooking oil

If you have leftover grease from cooking bacon or ground beef or if you have oil from frying you want to make sure that you dispose of the oil correctly.

Putting cooking oils down the drain is not the answer as this will clog your drains. You need to make sure that you let it cool and dispose of it in the trash.

It is very important to make sure that you dispose of your cooking oils correctly. I am going to give you a few ways to do and pouring it down the drain is NOT one of them.

You do not ever want to pour cooking oils down the drain even if you wait for it to cool. The fats will thicken and stick to the walls of your pipes and clog them.

Maybe you have just a little grease from cooking your Sunday morning bacon or maybe you just fried your Thanksgiving turkey. There are right and wrong ways to get rid of cooking oils.

Three ways to correctly get rid of your used cooking oils are by letting them cool and solidify, having a container to pour the grease into or mix it with an absorbent material and then throw it away.

Lets get into how each method works.

1. Solidify

Allow for the oils to cool in the that it is in and it will become more solid as it cools. You can then scrape the grease out of the pan and into the trash.

You can also line a glass, metal, or ceramic bowl (never plastic or styrofoam) with tin foil and pour your grease into it, and let it harden in the tin foil. Once it has hardened you can discard the foil.

2. Grease container

Save your milk carton, salsa jar, or spaghetti jar and use it for used cooking oils. Rinse out the container of choice and store it under your sink so that you have something to pour the grease into.

You want to make sure that you allow the grease to cool off some. Then pour your leftover grease into the container once it has cooled. Never put hot oil into the trash or a container.

You can keep this jar and use it over and over until lit is full and then discard it.

3. Absorbant material

If you need to get rid of your cooking oil you can add it to cat litter, sawdust, or sand to absorb the oils, and then throw it away.

This is a great way to get rid of larger amounts or oils from frying.

Reuse or recycle

If you like to fry foods a lot then save the oil and use it again and again. Once the oils start to have too many particles in them and no longer clear then you can discard them and start over.

There are programs such as Earth911 that can also help you to recycle your used cooking oil and turn it into biodiesel and cleaner fuel for vehicles or heating oil.