A decade-old Thanksgiving-time tradition has come to an end.
The Pima County Wastewater Reclamation Department will not collect used cooking oils and grease today, the day after Thanksgiving. The collection will instead be postponed until Jan. 9.
“We used to get a lot of requests from people who would drop off grease after Thanksgiving about what they could do with grease after other holidays,” said Lorraine Simon of the Pima County Wastewater Reclamation Department.
Since the only large-scale oil and grease collection day was the day after Thanksgiving, leaving people with few options for Christmas and other end-of holidays, Simon said the county decided this year to postpone collections until after the holiday season.
Simon said there are a handful of year round oil and grease drop-off sites, but most of the collections occur during the holidays.
The county encourages residents to reserve used grease and oil in bottles or other containers until the January drop-off event.
County officials want people to save and drop off oil and grease to reduce the potential damage the substances pose to the sewer system.
“We have found that pouring grease down the drain can back up sewer lines,” Simon said.
Backed up drains and sewer lines can cause slow drainage and even sewer overflows, costing consumers money and potentially creating health risks.
“It’s nasty and expensive to get it cleaned,” Simon said.
There’s another benefit to saving oil and grease and dropping it off: it will be converted into clean burning fuel.
The collected oil and grease will be given to Grecycle, a local biodiesel company.
Last year, Pima County and the company collected nearly 4,000 pounds of oil and grease that otherwise would have been dumped into drains or thrown into landfills.
Since the Thanksgiving grease collection began in 2005, more than 28,000 pounds of cooking oil and grease have been dropped off.
“We’d like to thank the community for their past support,” Simon said. “We could not do this without their support.”
