Ask Dethroner: Used Cooking Oil Disposal

In the interest of better dinner fare—pan-fried chicken specifically—and environmental responsibility, I’ve happened upon quite the problem: What do I do with all this used vegetable oil?

This is an important question. Animal fats like lard taste darn good. (Heck, even vegetable oil is pretty tasty.) You can perform numerous gastronomic miracles with it; it’s also an excellent addition to your Tuesday night Greek wrestling tournament. We use tons of it—in 1997 total world fat consumption was over 184 million tons; Just imagine how much more we’re using now that we’re deep-frying Iraqi insurgents.

Fifty years ago you might have put used oil in the slop bucket with the other kitchen scraps and fed it to the hogs or the chickens. These days, in an urban setting, you don’t have the same methods of disposal available. I suggest the following course of action:

• Reuse your cooking oil. Oil used for deep frying can be re-used several times. After the oil has cooled strain it through a coffee filter or cheesecloth into a clean glass container with a lid. Over time the smoke point of the oil will lower. When your filtered oil begins to smoke before you can get your food into the pan it’s time to toss it.
• Talk to the owners of local restaurants. A few are beginning to sell their used oil to biodiesel producers. They may be happy to allow you to discard of your used oil in their containers. (On the other hand, they may identify you as a hippy terrorist and call the FBI on you.)
• If you have the space and a large compost system you can compost the used oil in small amounts. “If you can trace your compostables back to a living source then it can be composted”.
• Locate you local Household Hazardous Waste Drop-Off Center. They’ll probably take your used oil to the landfill anyway but some cities are sending it to biodiesel producers.
• 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.