New York would like you to stop pouring cooking grease down the drain

dirty cooking oil — Until we get these, just dump it in a yogurt container. via Inhabitat

So you’ve made a lovely meal for your special lady and you both ate it and are sated. And like any good America, you made your meal by cooking it in stupendous amounts of oil, leaving you now with a stupendous amount of dirty cooking oil. “I’ll just dump this down the drain,” you think. But don’t do that, because it turns out so many people are doing that, and ruining the city’s pipes that the Department of Environmental Protection has a whole website set up asking you to not do that, and instead dispose of it properly.

The proper way to get rid of cooking grease, according to the DEP is to pour your excess grease into a non-recyclable ~~plastic~~ container and then throw that out with your regular garbage. Also, be sure to wipe the pan or pot down with a paper towel before washing it off, to make sure even a little bit of grease doesn’t get into your pipes. And this goes without saying, but make sure the pan full of oil isn’t bubbling hot when you wipe it off. If you don’t, that’s on you, not the DEP.

Anyway, don’t feel bad if you didn’t realize the proper cooking grease disposal protocols. Clearly lots of people didn’t know this, or else the DEP wouldn’t have gone on their PR campaign about how to get rid of it properly. But next time you’re gonna think you’re too cool for proper disposal, remember that in addition to hurting the sewer system we all use, the grease could build up in your pipes so much they clog and back up. Then you’ll be stuck with foul smelling shit bubbling up out of your drain and you’ll have to shamefully explain to a plumber that it happened because you didn’t give a shit about the common good. And plumbers are notorious for upholding the social contract, so their judgement on you will be harsh.