Comments on: Ask Dethroner: Used Cooking Oil Disposal

By: Mark McGarvey

Mark McGarvey — Mon, 19 May 2008 02:40:33 +0000

This is a serious question about the long-term effects of cooking oil in the pipes. My senior friend in Oakland, CA lives in a building (THE ALTENHEIM) filled with elderly Chinese, whose oily food smells are very potent. Five weeks ago, a dreadful, acrid, unidentifiable odor started coming through the living/dining room of this very small apartment, intermittently, quite bad, but not sickening as with most rotting material. He has had the fire dept. come, the toxic waste people, the building manager and building handyman, etc. etc. all involved in the hunt for the source of this smell. One day, as he was complaining yet again, I insisted we run downstairs to see exactly what WAS beneath his second-story window. There was a closed pipe coming up, with the odor right near the ground around it, and it leads into the crawlspace beneath the building.

It suddenly dawned on me that these immigrant peasant Chinese, most of whom speak no English (their immigrant children dump them on the CHC budget), could be dumping so much oil down the pipes that it has coagulated with other materials, creating this strange and cloying odor.

Could I be right? What would be the solution if it is true? Or would you have another idea what could be causing it? No one has been able to do anything!

Write to me at my email, frblarney@aol.com, if ANYONE has ever had such an experience in an apartment house.

Mark

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:46:16 +0000

I’ve also read in cooking group newsthreads that you can mix it with bird seed and the birds like it. I haven’t tried that, though.

By: Pendragon

Pendragon — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:33:51 +0000

The best thing to do with it is run your car on it… Now I know that most of the readers of Dethroner are from the US where Diesel cars are a bit thin on the ground but over here in Europe they are everywhere… Running your car on Veg Oil is becoming normal in the UK because of the tax on fuel. Just think a liter of diesel is £0.90 but a liter of Veg Oil is £0.40 it’s a no brainer really… The only down side is your car smells like a chip shop :)

By: The_Chef

The_Chef — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 15:07:52 +0000

you really shouldn’t try to compost oil, it’s a animal by-product, which in animal speak means, “hmm, that smells like cooked meats, let’s go ransack that compost pile”. It’s a pain in the ass, and will never really break down, since it’s broken down already, your compost will always have an oil slick. Then when you’re spreading it around as compost, then you’ll have to deal with the insect infestation and animals just destroying your plants. Uh, not that I’ve done that or anything :p

I pour it into Poland Spring 5 gallon carboys and then bring it to the dump on waste days.

But if you’re fancy pants and cook duck, SAVE that shit. It’s liquid gold. Strain it through a chinois or a strainer with coffee filters or paper towels to get the bulky shit out of it, then put it in a container and keep it in the fridge. Duck fat is some of the most heavenly stuff on earth. You technically could do this with all your oils to reuse. As long as you don’t scortch the oil, you can reuse it a few times. I tend to get an average of 2 uses per batch o’ oil.

By: Naveen

Naveen — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 23:38:21 +0000

Remembering from my college days four years ago, a friend and I collected the used cooking oil from a Chinese restaurant. We modified his old VW Jetta and used the oil as biodiesel fuel. It was good for some time until we found a farmer using this oil in his tractor. He was paid a nickel to take all the oil.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:54:16 +0000

Find someone who brews their own biodiesel or runs a veg-oil car an offer to hand it off to them. :)

By: Spiney Norman

Spiney Norman — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:07:50 +0000

The merits of good used cooking oil are under appreciated. I usually pour some on the dog’s food and some on the cat’s food for several days. It may not be any better for their arteries than mine, but it does wonders for the animals’ coats and they will thank you for it.

By: thaddeus

thaddeus — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:54:37 +0000

“Never ever pour your used cooking oil down the drain. This will leave a high quality, sticky grease like substance in your drain pipes and you will spend many hours cleaning it out.”

where’s your sense of adventure?! this would be a GREAT example to use in your plumbing week!

By: AdamOndi

AdamOndi — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:53:12 +0000

If you just want to throw away the oil without trying to pour it down your drain or something (which is a good way to screw up your plumbing) then you can simply line a container with a wad of paper towels and pour the unwanted grease/oil into the container. The paper towels will soak up the grease/oil and make it much easier to dispose of the stuff.

By: Eion

Eion — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:44:27 +0000

Or you could dump the vat of oil out in the woods… but watch out for the trees.
(but really, don’t do this, it’s just a reference to a TV show – be respectful to your earth mother)

More seriously, if you’re only shallow frying stuff, you could use cooking spray instead. Much less oil used, so disposal is no longer an issue. It’s also probably healthier.