Household Fats, Oil and Grease from Cooking
Your mom taught you to pour your bacon grease and other liquid fats into an empty soup can, right? But sometimes you are in a hurry and pour it down your kitchen drain?
Please don’t!
Just as grease clogs your arteries, it clogs the local sewer district's and County's arteries—our sewer system.
Where does grease come from?
Most of us know grease as a byproduct of cooking. Grease is found in such things as:
Meat fats
Dairy products
Lard
Sauces & gravies
Cooking oil
Baked goods
Shortening
Food scraps
Butter and margarine
Unfortunately, there are currently no recycling options for this material.
Too often, grease is washed into the plumbing system, usually through the kitchen sink. Grease sticks to the inside of sewer pipes (both on your property and in the streets). Over time, the grease can build and block the entire pipe.
Home garbage disposals do not keep grease out of the plumbing system. These units only shred solid material into smaller pieces and do not prevent grease from going down the drain.
Commercial additives, including detergents that claim to dissolve grease, may pass grease down the line and cause problems in other areas.
The results of a grease-blocked sewer pipe can be:
Raw sewage overflowing in your home or your neighbor's home
An expensive and unpleasant cleanup that often must be paid for by you, the homeowner (the average cleanup cost is about $3,000; this does not include replacing carpets and repairing walls)
Potential contact with disease-causing organisms
An increase in operation and maintenance costs by the local sewer department and King County, which causes higher sewer bills for customers.
Just look at what happened on the Eastside not too long ago:
Grease-blocked sewer pipe causes overflow in Bellevue
May 18, 2006
News Release - City of Bellevue crews…responded last week to a local sewer overflow that was later found to be caused by a grease blockage in King County's Issaquah Interceptor. The interceptor is a large sewer line that carries wastewater from homes and businesses in the Issaquah and Bellevue areas to the county's regional wastewater plant in Renton for treatment.
Between 5,000 and 15,000 gallons of wastewater overflowed from a manhole near the intersection of S.E. 47th St. and 194th Ave. S.E. into a nearby creek that flows to Lake Sammamish. City of Bellevue staff stopped the leak, cleared the blockage, and began clean-up. To protect public health, they posted a nearby beach as closed, took water samples, and told health and regulatory agencies about the leak
Grease gets into the sewer system from household drains or businesses with poorly maintained grease traps, where it sticks to the insides of pipes. Over time, grease build-up can block an entire pipe and cause sewage overflows.
"One of the best ways people can keep fats and grease out of the sewer is to keep it out of their drains," said King County Wastewater Treatment Division Director Don Theiler. "Not only does it help prevent sewer system overflows, it can help people avoid their own costly plumbing problems.”
So, what to do?
By following a few simple steps, you can help prevent costly sewer spills in the future.
Small amounts of cooking oil (this includes salad oil, frying oil and bacon fat) should be poured into an old milk carton, frozen juice container, or other non-recyclable package, and disposed of in the garbage
Dishes and pots that are coated with greasy leftovers, should be wiped clean with a disposable towel prior to washing or placing in the dishwasher
Instead of placing fat trimmings from meat down the garbage disposal, place them in a trash can
Please do your part to keep fats, oils and greases out of the sewer!
