Why Can’t I Get Payment for Grease Trap Contents?

Your UCO collector pays you for the grease in your collection tank, so why do they charge you to clean out your grease trap? Doesn’t that contain oil too? Here’s why.

Grease trap contents contain very little used cooking oil. Grease traps trap the foodstuffs that kitchen staff scrape from plates, the sauces and burned bits from cooking pans and lots of water which runs down the sink when pots and pans are rinsed. Grease traps should be cleaned when they reach 1/4 full.

Putting grease trap contents in your used cooking oil container

Depositing the contents of your grease trap into your used cooking oil storage tanks is a bad decision. The grease trap contents will sink to the bottom of your storage tank and separate into brown sludge and water. Not only will your UCO collector not suction water and brown sludge into his truck, it will sit there indefinitely. It can even contaminate your oil, rendering it useless. Then he won’t even pay you for that.

What happens when sludge and water mix with used cooking oil?

Over time, if the sludge and water stay in contact with the used cooking oil it breaks down the  oil and renders it worthless. The sludge has to be separated and deposited in a landfill or donated to a compost facility. The oil has to be heated to high temperatures to vaporize it and get it out of the oil. In both cases, it costs the UCO collector money to dispose of it. 

The bottom line on grease trap contents

The bottom line is that grease trap contents can destroy the value of used cooking oil and financially penalize your UCO collector when they dispose of them. Grease trap contents should never be put into your used cooking oil container. Grease traps should be cleaned monthly and the brown sludge put into a 5 (or 4.5) gallon plastic bucket with a lid and placed in a regular trash dumpster.

A UCO collector will not pay for the contents of your grease trap. If a restaurant continues to dump the contents into the used cooking oil container you may find the UCO collector unwilling to pick up your used cooking grease.