Can you put grease down the drain

“Pouring grease down the drain is always a bad idea regardless of if you pour hot water along with it or not.”

Between cooking your Thanksgiving turkey, bacon-wrapped asparagus, casseroles and other yummy dishes, the holidays give you a lot of grease to dispose of.

With more grease than usual to get rid of, you may not be prepared for how to deal with the slimy mess. Thanksgiving only comes once a year. Maybe just this once you’ll dump it all down the kitchen sink and forget about it.

Is pouring grease down the drain really all that bad? What if you run hot water while you do it to keep it from congealing? Maybe a dash of dish soap can chase it down and be just enough for the grease to not get stuck. After all, once it’s gone, you’ll have nothing to worry about, right?

Let’s Be Clear, Never Pour Grease Down a Drain

What tricks many people about grease is that, while you’re cooking with it, it’s a liquid. At higher than room temperatures, grease liquefies. And what do you do with liquid waste? Well, you pour it down the drain of course!

The problem is that as soon as the grease cools, it congeals and plugs up your pipes. Over time, your drains will run slower and slower until they get clogged enough to wreak havoc. So let’s debunk these four greasy myths about how to deal with grease.

Myth #1: It’s okay with hot water:

False. The problem with fatty waste is that it will eventually congeal at room temperature. Even the hottest water will not be able to keep the grease warm forever and fatty residue will still coat the inside of your pipes, trapping other food particles.

What’s worse, fats are less dense than water and hydrophobic (meaning grease and water don’t mix). Between floating to the top of any liquid and refusing to dissolve, fats effectually do everything they can to fight being flushed down the drain.

Myth #2: Dish soap will do the trick:

False. While it is true that dish soaps can break down fats temporarily, it’s not going to be enough to counteract the ill effects of grease forever. The companies who formulate dish soap intend for their products to clean your dishes not your drains. Otherwise, we can assume they would be smart enough to slap a new label on it and sell it as an easy solution to your grease disposal needs. If they know and are willing to admit it can’t do that, we shouldn’t kid ourselves either.

Myth #3: Cooking oils that are liquid at room temperature are okay:

False. While fats that are solid at room temperature pose the largest risk to the health of your pipes, canola and olive oil still cause issues. They are also hydrophobic, making it difficult to wash them out. As they coat the inside of your plumbing, food particles stick to the walls and gum up the whole operation.

Myth #4: But I have a garbage disposal:

False. The garbage disposal will not change the how grease behaves once it finds its home in your pipes. Furthermore, it made it onto the top of our list of foods to avoid putting in your garbage disposal and #5 on our list of don’ts for your garbage disposal.

How to Properly Dispose of Grease

Pour all of the grease, fats, and cooking oils in a disposable container; from the Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey, from the fried green beans, or from sauteed red skin potatoes. An empty margarine container works great for this. Then, wipe down all oily dishes with a paper towel and throw it away.

Once all of the cooking, eating, and cleaning has been done for the day, tuck the grease container in the freezer. Maybe include a note that says “not ice cream” just to be safe. The following day, you can place the container in the trash. You won’t have to worry about making a mess in your trash bin or clogging up your pipes.

Here at Mike Wilson Plumbing in Chesterfield, VA, we want you to keep your drains running smoothly. We hope you take these tips and properly dispose of your fatty waste. But if you have any questions or a plumbing emergency this holiday season, call us at (804) 641-6570.

Please do not put your grease down the sink. Flickr user icanchangethisright BI Answers: Why can't I pour grease down the drain?

We've all been warned that pouring that delicious bacon grease down the drain is bad... but why is it bad?

The answer lies in the chemistry that happens after your wastewater is flushed from your pipes and delivered to the sewers: The fats in the grease and oil from your kitchen mix with the other chemicals in the sewers and form nasty conglomerations of chemicals that can build up and block the pipes that take our dirty water to the wastewater treatment plant.

According to a recent review of the subject, these fat and oil buildups caused about 47% of the up to 36,000 sewer overflows that happen annually in the U.S.

Here's how that goes down.

Grease + Sewer = Fatberg

When you pour grease into your sink it's just beginning its travels. The grease and oil head down your pipes and into the sewers where they meet up with all the other wastewater from the area. Here is where the nastiness starts.

These globs can build up in your home's pipes like this:

The fats in the grease get broken down into their component parts — fatty acids and glycerol. These fatty acids bind calcium found in the sewers — created from biological processes including the corrosion of concrete — to create a "soap" compound.

When sewer levels rise high, these fat blobs glob onto the ceiling of the pipes, creating stalactite-type structures that are sometimes called "fatbergs." We've actually just recently been discovering how they come to be. A 2011 paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology was the first to successfully form these deposits in the lab.

While it's called a "soap" because of its chemical composition, this isn't something you'd want to wash yourself with. These blobs of fatty compounds can become bus-sized — for example, here's a 17-ton fatberg from a British sewer:

These clogs block the sewer line and can cause disgusting and dangerous backups. While drain cleaners might clear out your pipes in your home, the greasy mess just gets washed into the sewers afterward, creating a bigger problem down the line.

In the UK, where the footage above is from, the team sent to clean up had to go down into the sewers and power-wash the sewers to dislodge and break apart the fatberg. It takes weeks to break these apart, according to the local water authority Thames Water.

Where is it worst?

Fatbergs are more likely to form in areas with lots of restaurants, since there is more grease heading down into the sewers to create the deposits.

People who live in old or large apartment buildings should also be careful: Their grease is competing with the grease of everyone else who has ever lived in their building and on their block — even just a tablespoon per person can really add up when it all mixes together in the sewers. This could happen at any level — within the plumbing of a home, or at the neighborhood level. It's also possible that these soapy messes can block later stages of the water treatment processes at the city level.

When these huge globs happen, they can be really terrible to deal with if not caught early. The UK fatberg seen above was only discovered when locals started complaining that they couldn't flush their toilets. It could have been much worse. "If we hadn't discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston," Gordon Hailwood, the local sewer guy said.

THIS is why you put your grease in the trash, not the sink. CountyClean What to do instead?

If you make a lot of grease at one time, say, frying a turkey, some areas offer fat and oil recycling to get rid of it and actually turn it into useful biofuel.

For smaller amounts of grease, let it solidify in the pan or in a jar, then throw the solid grease in the trash can. Make sure to wipe the greasy pan or dish with a paper towel to soak up the rest. Try to get as much as possible of the grease and oil into the trash instead of the drain — just the little bit that washes out with the wastewater can cause problems over time, especially in areas with high populations like cities.

"People try to discharge their oil and grease properly, but over time, you can get a fair amount of oil and grease from washing pots, pans and dishware," Ducoste told LiveScience in 2011. "The cumulative impact could be substantial. It's that long-term consistent discharge of that oil and grease, even if it's a small amount at a time, which could lead to problems."

When you do accidentally get some grease in your pipes, you can go ahead and wash it out using boiling water and a mixture of vinegar and baking soda, according ot Scott English Plumbing. This will help push it out of your pipes, though it will still be able to coagulate in the main water system.

The best plan is not to let any grease get down the drain if you don't want the sewer coming out of your faucet.

This post is part of a continuing series that answers all of your "why" questions related to science. Have your own question? Email with the subject line "Q&A"; tweet your question to @BI_Science; or post to our Facebook page.

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