If you own a restaurant, you’re probably familiar with the large amount of grease associated with cooking at scale. But did you know that old grease found in your grease traps can be recycled? Here’s what you need to know.

How Grease Traps Capture Waste

To start out, it’s helpful to consider how grease traps capture waste in the first place. Grease traps are small metal boxes located inside of food-producing businesses. They help remove greases and solids from wastewater before it enters the sewersystem. Fats, oils, and grease (FOG) that are commonly disposed of in food-producing businesses can build up in wastewater treatment facilities and septic tanks. When unaddressed, this can overwhelm infrastructure and lead to the release of untreated sewage. These oils can also cool and solidify, combining with other solids in the waste system to block pipes. Grease traps help prevent all of this from happening.

Liquids from sinks flow into the traps, and solids that are more dense than water drop to the bottom while greases float to the top. The remaining water, which is mostly grease free, is then put into the sewer system. Businesses service grease traps on a monthly basis. Health code regulations specify cleaning schedules and procedures.

The Recycling Process

So where does recycling come in? When a business like Moon comes to your establishment to clean your grease trap, we end up taking away lots of used FOGs so you can have a clean grease trap. We can thoroughly pump out, clean and dispose of all grease, wastewater, and solid material from your grease trap system by suctioning it out with a hose system. Also, we suction into a holding tank on a truck.

We then take the grease, in a liquid form at this point, to a treatment facility. This facility sorts out the FOGs from the water even further. They put brown grease so it is ready for recycling. Some recycling methods re-purpose the grease to be used as a fertilizer in farm fields. Other times, the FOGs can be purified to the point that they are made into usable fuel. In all cases, your wastewater is transformed into something useful.

How Moon Can Help

Professionals like Moon can thoroughly clean and monitor your grease trap system. Plus, we can help keep track of your maintenance schedule and adherence to regulations.

This has several benefits. For one, properly functioning systems prevent a negative environmental impact from sewage overflow. Plus, it saves time and money by preventing a backed up system that can shut down business. We can also make recommendations about cleaning commercial kitchens to mitigate the impact of FOGs on your grease trap or interceptor system and the environment.

Schedule your next grease service by contacting Moon Grease Trap Cleaning at 502-776-2199. We are happy to answer any and all questions you may have.