Restaurant Grease Recycling Best Practices: A Guide

While it may be the last thing some of us think of as being important to running a restaurant, your employees need to be educated on the best practices of handling restaurant grease. Here’s why. 

Benefits to restaurant employees

First, educating restaurant employees on best practices in cooking oil recycling helps insure their personal safety in the kitchen. 

Every year more than 3 million food service employees (and over 1 million guests) are injured in restaurant slips and falls, according to the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI). A recent NSFI study estimated that the industry spends over $2 billion on this type of injury each year.

A majority of fast food employees get injured on the job at least once a year.

• 87% get injured on the job at least once per year.
• 78% report getting injured multiple times.
• 79% report burn injuries.
• 73% report multiple burns.

Many of these slips, falls and burns involve cooking oil.

Benefits to restaurant owners

Implementing and teaching best practices in handling cooking oil helps restaurant employees prevent injuries and keeps them healthy and on the job. This saves restaurants in terms of turnover, time away from work, workman’s comp claims, higher insurance premiums and lawsuits.

Secondly, implementing and teaching best practices in handling used cooking oil benefits restaurants by:

1. Preventing clogged drains and sewer backups;
2. Avoiding water pollution from improper disposal;
3. Averting fines and shutdowns from violation of regulations;
4. Avoiding damage to business and reputation.

This blog is a step-by-step guide to teaching best practices to employees in the handling of used cooking oil.

Step-by-Step Guide to best practices in used cooking oil recycling

• Step 1: Cool the Oil: Ensure the oil has cooled completely before attempting to move the oil from the fryer to the storage bin. Turn off the fryer first and let it cool to room temperature. This may take several hours.  
• Step 2: Filter the Oil: Filtering the oil to remove food particles may allow you to reuse the oil several times saving the restaurant money in the purchase of cooking oil. There are portable oil filter machines such as the Frymaster caddy filter machine that are very effective for this. Some fryers such as the Henny Penny may be self-filtering. You can also chemically filter (or polish) the oil to remove blood and protein and other substances not removed by physical filtering to increase the lifespan of the oil.
• Step 3: Transfer the Oil: Transferring the oil to the used cooking oil storage bin is the most error prone part of the process. Be sure to use leak-free containers. Transfer slowly and carefully if doing it manually. If the container is heavy be sure to involve more than one person. Oil caddies and shortening shuttles are very effective at transporting oil from a fryer to recycling bin. The gold standard is a closed system that transfers the oil through piping to the storage tank at the press of a button
• Step 4: Store the Oil: Used cooking oil storage bins come in all sorts of sizes and forms and can be placed in many locations both indoors and outdoors. An indoor tank serviced by pipes or a caddy is a very safe alternative. This keeps the tank from being damaged by thieves or the oil being stolen or spilled. An outdoor metal bin with locks, kept in a safe inaccessible area is a good second choice. For smaller volumes, an ecotub stored out of the way, under countertops or prep tables is another choice.
• Step 5: Schedule a Pickup: Finally, scheduling a used oil pickup from Rebirth is important to ensure the oil is recycled and not stolen by thieves or spilled  in your parking lot. Rebirth uses software to predict when your cooking oil bin will be full. But, should it be needed, be sure to call them if the bin appears to be getting full. They are available 24/7 for emergency service.

Summary of Used Cooking Oil Recycling Best Practices

Following best practices for used cooking oil recycling in restaurants prevents slips, burns and falls to employees keeping them safe and healthy. The benefit of implementing best practices to the restaurant owners is reducing turnover, lawsuits, workman’s comp, reputational damage and fines for violations of local regulations.

The best practices guide for used cooking oil recycling specifies the steps for a restaurant to follow in recycling its used oil, including the available tools for transferring, handling and storing used cooking oil to insure employee safety, avoid theft and keep kitchens safe and clean.

Rebirth provides all of the tools and automation for managing used cooking oil mentioned above. Call Rebirth Biofuels today at (985) 250-0054 for a free consultation.