Lets say you just made a great batch of hot and greasy bacon. The bacon is of course delicious but you find you are left with a pan filled of bacon fat and grease. You figure that you can just pour it down the sink, at first all goes well but in a couple hours you notice that your sink is backed up and the water is not draining down the drain properly. This is the first clue that you failed to dispose of your cooking oil properly. The reason you can not dispose of cooking oil down the drain is because of the chemical make up of the oil. oil is classified as a lipid which is water insoluble. Since water is insoluble disposing of cooking oil properly means more than just pouring it down the sink. The insoluble nature of the cooking oil will mean water is unable to rinse it down the drain because the oil and water will not mix. Lipids have another interesting characteristic that makes disposing of oil properly very important. When a lipid is heated up the hydrogen bonds will break apart causing it to turn into a liquid. Unfortunately for your water drain a lipid will turn back into a solid when it is cooled. What this means is that when the lipid is poured down as a liquid it will start to harden on the drain walls. Eventually the oil will completely harden in your drain pipes and water will be unable to pass through.
Best way of Disposing of Cooking Oil Properly
So it is obvious that you cannot successfully get rid of oil by pouring it down your sink drain. Instead in order to properly dispose of cooking oil you must pour it into a container and store it in a cold place. By doing this you will cause the lipid to harden into a solid form. This will make the eventual disposal of the cooking oil much easier and less messy than if it was kept in a liquid form. After you have cooled the lipid to a solid form you can dispose of the oil using your regular trash or recycling methods. You will usually want to use a plastic jar to store your grease than a glass jar because plastic ones are less likely to break if dropped. A glass jar is also likely to break if it experiences a large influx in temperatures. Therefore if you have boiling oil and place it into the glass jar it could break.
There is another option of disposing of oil properly other than just throwing it in the trash. Cooking oil will decompose if left out in the elements for a long time. Therefore if you mix in oil with other composting materials and place it into a composting pile or barrel you will be creating your very own nutrient rich compost instead of just throwing away the oil. So please don’t take the easy route and pour the oil down the drain because you could end up causing damage to your water pipes. Instead be sure you follow the steps indicated above and dispose your cooking oil properly. Worlds Famous Media Link