Disposing of used cooking oil

dvince1

We use a chip pan/deep frier occasionally.
My wife usually takes the discarded/used oil (once completely cooled down)
and uses a funnel to put it into the original plastic oil container.
She'd then put the oil container (with cap on) into our non-recycle
bin for collection. I imagine we could improve on that by seeing if
there is anyone in our locality who takes discarded chip oil and
is able to recycle for biofuels,etc.

We have an au-pair from Eastern Europe and I noticed that she was
taking the cooled oil and pouring down the toilet basin.

Apart from losing opportunity to recycle are there other pitfalls or
no-nos about putting used cooking oil down the toilet basin ?
I mentioned this to my brother (who is more ecologically minded than
I am) and he thought that the dumping down the toilet was just
as ecologically sound ....

Any advice ?
Sorry about the odd query !

.Vince.

Judge2112

I heard from a plumber that it is NOT a good idea to put used oils down any drains, as it can clog the pipes and potentially cause problems with your septic tank (if you have one).


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noby

Or if you do pour it down the drain I would wash it down with plenty of hot water.

air

NEVER pour it down the drain, it clogs everything up and causes the world of problems.
Pour it back into the carton and take it to your local municipal recycling centre, I'm pretty sure all the central ones accept used oil.
If you have a diesel car you could filter it and add it to your tank without any problems (practically guaranteed in a low ratio anyway).

netwhizkid

In my house hold I have a 5gallon drum in the garage and I just pour it into that using a large funnel. Then about once a year (or whenever the drum fills) I will take it to the waste oils tank in my local recycling centre or give it to some Bio-diesel fella if I hear of one. I have only started doing this recently.

Before that it was a case of spilling it onto the grass near the trees at the far end of the lawn, it killed the grass and left a big grease mark but I only stopped it as I feared it would draw rats for the winter. It used biodegrade there and I would turn the soil every few months with a shovel to make it look less sightly.

dvince1

Many thanks for all the advice.

I mentioned it to the au pair the other day and then had a re-think
as I wasn't sure what the ramifications of putting the oil down the
drain would be. Now from you guys and a bit of googling I see it's
100% the wrong way to go.. my wife was right all along. I must
look into the recycling options though!

thanks

.vince.

mukki

in fact bring the whole deep fat fryer to the recycler

tricky D

iirc pouring oils and the like down the drain screw up the biodegraders used in sewage treatment and clog the sewerage