Recycle your cooking oil at Lexington’s Gobble Grease Toss

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - You can go green this Black Friday by recycling your used cooking oil at the Gobble Grease Toss.

If you fried your turkey on Thanksgiving, you can turn in your used cooking oil to be recycled for free on Friday, Nov. 25, at Redwood Cooperative School, 166 Crestwood Dr., from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Gobble Grease Toss, now in its thirteenth year, is a partnership between the City of Lexington, the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research (UK CAER), Redwood School and Kelley Green Biofuel.

The event allows Lexington residents to recycle hundreds of gallons of cooking oil while also bringing attention to the harm caused by pouring oils and grease down the drain.

The cooking oil that is collected will be used for biofuel research with UK CAER. Kelley Green Biofuel recycles the remainder of the cooking oil.

The University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research also collects a small amount of oil to use for research. The goal of the research is to take that waste and turn it into something useful.

“And the conversion of that into renewable diesel, or sustainable aviation fuel,” Dr. Eduardo Santillan-Jimenez says. “Fuels that are indistinguishable from petroleum-derived fuels.”

It will be a fuel that can be used with no modifications, unlike biodiesel, which is normally mixed in with petroleum fuel. Dr. Santillan-Jiminez also says their fuel would be carbon neutral.

“Whereas petroleum takes carbon that has been stored underground for millions of years and put it into the atmosphere for it, never to come back, when you make fuels out of a renewable source that closes the carbon cycle because plants can take then that CO2 as they grow,” Dr. Santillian-Jiminiez said.

He says even as the number of electric cars continues to rise, the need for fuel will remain. This means creating fuel that doesn’t put more CO2 into the air, will benefit us all.

“we’re running out of time. And we better start treating this as the emergency that it is,” Dr. Santillian-Jiminiez said.

The Gobble Grease Toss is free for all Fayette County residents (no businesses).

Have your cooking oil in a disposable container with a lid in your trunk. Oil should be brought in a hard container like a jug or bucket with a lid, not a bag. Remain in your car and a volunteer will remove the oil for you.

If you cannot make it to the Gobble Grease Toss, you can properly dispose of cooking oil by hardening it in the refrigerator and placing it in your green trash cart. Cooking oil should never be poured down sink drains, as it can clog pipes in both your home and the city’s sewer system.

For more information on the Gobble Grease Toss, call LexCall at 3-1-1 or (859) 425-2255 or visit //LexingtonKY.gov/GobbleGreaseToss

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