Overview

The Town’s full-time Residential Waste Cooking Oil Disposal Program launched July 1, 2009 and is designed to give Cary's solid waste customers an opportunity to properly dispose of cooking oil and grease by requesting a special collection. The used cooking oil and grease will be picked up at the curb and recycled into an environmentally beneficial bio-fuel.

Details

To schedule a pick-up, single-family residential customers must call 311 or (919) 469-4090 or fill out a request via our online services portal. A minimum of a half-gallon of waste oil or grease is required prior to collection. (A half-gallon of grease/oil is approximately one, 2-liter soda bottle).

Citizens in multi-family communities (apartment/townhome communities) can also recycle their waste cooking oils and grease through a special collection event. Property Managers should contact Donald Johnson, Utility Pretreatment Program Supervisor, at (919) 319-4564 to coordinate an event in their neighborhood.

Curbside FOG Collection Guidelines

• Place waste cooking oil and grease in a sealable food container such as the original oil container or a soda/juice/milk bottle. Plastic or metal sealable screw top containers only.
• Label the container with "Waste Cooking Oil" and secure the cap or lid to prevent spillage.
• Call (919) 469-4090 to schedule a free curbside pick-up
• Place the container at the curb by 7 a.m. on the day of scheduled pick up. 
• Oil and grease that is left at the curb on your regular collection day without scheduling a pick up will be tagged with a notice to call 311 or (919) 469-4090. 

Items Accepted

• Cooking oils (vegetable, corn, peanut, sunflower, canola, olive, soybean, flaxseed or any combination of edible cooking oils)
• Margarine
• Animal fats/greases (tallow, lard, butter or any combination of animal fats)

Oils and fats can be mixed in a single container.

Items Not Accepted

Water, food sauces, gravies, large amounts of food particles, plastic, paper, motor oil, fuels, chemicals and detergents should not be mixed with the waste cooking oils.

Benefits

• Recycling cooking oils and grease helps to reduce blockages in the sewer system. Every year there are six sewer overflows in the town in which oil and grease was a main contributor to the blockage.
• By recycling cooking oils and grease, citizens can also help reduce landfill disposal.
• Bio-fuel will be produced from the collected cooking oil and will be used locally as an alternative to petroleum fuels. Bio-diesel is a cleaner burning fuel that can help with air quality.

The Town uses B-20 bio-diesel blend (20 percent bio-fuel and 80 percent diesel) in fleet diesel vehicles. Piedmont Biofuels of Pittsboro has been selected for collection and biofuel production of the used residential cooking oils. The Town will receive 60 cents per gallon for used residential cooking oils collected through the program.

To schedule a curbside FOG collection call 311 or (919) 469-4090 or fill out a pick-up request via our online services portal.

Donald Johnson
Utility Pretreatment Program Supervisor
(919) 319-4564
don.johnson@carync.gov

Free viewers are required for some of the attached documents.
They can be downloaded by clicking on the icons below.

Acrobat Reader Windows Media Player Word Viewer Excel Viewer PowerPoint Viewer