With the holidays quickly approaching, it is important to start thinking about:
1. How much food waste you are generating this time of year, and;
2. How you are disposing of your fats, oils and greases you inherently create while preparing holiday meals for the family.
Time and time again, we will remind you how important it is to properly dispose of your food waste, ensuring it goes into the organic waste stream, rather than the garbage. The reasons for this go beyond the scope of this blog post, but for more information on proper disposal of food waste, please see our other blog posts!
In this post, I would like to focus on fats, oils and grease disposal, which often goes un-discussed. Fats, oils and grease, also commonly known as FOG, are naturally created through preparing meals- especially meats and poultry.
When I think of FOG, I always instantly think of the most common meat that creates excess FOG- bacon! The problem with this type of FOG, is that it liquefies when it’s hot, making it seem like an ‘okay’ substance to put down the drain. But as it gets colder/room temperature it solidifies and hardens, making it an absolute mess in the sewer drains. It has the ability to build up overtime and clog your plumbing and sewers- which could even lead to your basement flooding!
Given this, it is always important to dispose of your FOG properly, either putting in your organics bin or bringing it to your local landfill depots. Although this would differ from municipality to municipality, most have local collection programs for FOG or if you are a commercial business, we would be happy to assist in the collection! Look online for local collection programs!
For example, the city of London has launched an FOG collection program in partnership with us. Having collection of FOG at their local landfill depots, they have dramatically decreased the amount of FOG going into their sewer lines. Check out the latest CBC interview regarding the new program.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/fatbergs-drain-grease-london-1.4433983