Oils. Everyone uses oil in the kitchen. From cooking oil, to sunflower oil, to olive oil, to fifty other types of oil used in kitchens around the world.
The problem is, what to do with it after it has been used?
“Oil forms a thin layer on top of water causing a range of problems. Oils act like a lid on the surface and the water cannot 'breathe'. It prevents oxygen getting into the water and restricts other gases produced in the water getting out. It coats the feathers of birds and fur of animals and causes problems for wading and diving birds. Insects that live on the surface of the water are also badly affected.”
“Oils, fats and organic wastes, including food scraps, reduce the levels of oxygen in water. Bacteria use oxygen in the process of decomposing organic matter, making less oxygen available for aquatic life. Decomposing organic matter can also produce methane and hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg gas) which can be poisonous to aquatic life.”
Department of Primary Industries and Water – State of Tasmania – Australia http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/SJON-52H88D?open (see also for other threats to the environment originating in our kitchens and bathrooms)
Because of the characteristics of oils, and because of their tendency to spread out into thin and broad membranes, one litre of oil may pollute thousands of litres of oil. Some sources mention as much as 1 Million litres of water.
So, don’t just throw it down the sink or toilet. Doing this can cause you a number of problems besides being problematic for your local waste treatment plant and the surrounding ecosystems.
Here’s why:
- it can clog up your pipes - Oil coagulates when it gets cold. Even if you pour it with detergent and hot water, consider that the hot water will only warm up the pipes for a certain length. From there the pipes will be cold and the oil will start clogging. Detergent will also only work so far. Even if you get most of the oil out into the mains before it clogs, this will help clog the system elsewhere, and if at some point there is an overflow the oils will end up in the ecosystem.
- Even if the oils make it to the waste treatment plant, large quantities of oil will wreak havoc among the bacteria working to clean the water there, making the whole plant less effective. Besides, it might clog the physical infrastructure of the plant. I’ve heard of stories of meters of gathered up fat at the entrance of the pipes to waste treatment plants during the Christmas Holidays due to all the fat washed into the pipes
Now, will this mean the water becomes unusable? No. But it does mean that the chain of life or habitat it sustained becomes jeopardized. Vegetable oils are nowhere as damaging as car oils and alike, and they do get degraded in time by bacteria and such, but, they characteristics and ubiquity mean they are an important threat to ecosystems. That is why specialists and agencies agree that a proper disposal of oils is one of the most important environmental tasks in our hands.
So what can we do with it?
To start with, make sure you can’t re-use it. I use as little oil as I can, and if there is any left at the end none the less, and it is reusable, I pour it (after it cools a bit) into a glass jar for later use.
When it needs throwing out, well, if you can give it over to a refiner it can be used to make diesel, which on top of everything burns cleaner than normal diesel. In fact, there are even small scale oil processing machines on the market so you can refine it yourself to run your car on if you have access to enough quantities of oil.
Great as this option might be, it is not there for everyone, so here are the instructions I found from authorities a bit all over the world:
- Strain/Pour the fats into a sealed container. If you can find a helpful local restaurant it might be willing to let you add the oil to their own grease bins (which they may be taking to be recycled into fuels or other products). If you are patient enough to gather a large quantity you should take into the local container park/landfill, and with a bit of luck they will have the possibility of processing it. If you have small quantities of oil, apparently the best thing to do is to put them into sealable containers and dumping them in the bin. Milk cartons are an example of container you might use
- If you do composting in your back garden, you can slowly and gradually pour small amounts of oil into it, at least if your composting pile has a healthy flora. Some authorities say you can dispose of small amounts in your garden. The assumption is that it will be possible to have small amounts of oil ‘eaten’ away without much damage, at least if it doesn’t hit water sources.
Also, to avoid washing oils into the sink unnecessarily, they advise you to scrape all of the oily remainders into the bin and swipe the pan before washing with a bit of toilet or kitchen paper.
Besides these ideas, a user on yahoo answers (mshonnie) suggests a number of great alternative uses for used vegetable oils. Here’s the link:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070930084319AA6rT5m
- Spray a key with cooking spray to make it easier to insert into a keyhole.
- Rub cooking oil onto a snow shovel and the snow will not stick to the shovel.
- Restore the original glow to a wooden salad bowl and wooden utensils by rubbing them with vegetable oil. Let them sit overnight, then wipe off the excess oil the following morning.
- Add a spoonful of olive oil to a bowl of water and soak a stiff chamois in it to restore softness.
- To remove unwanted adhesive from a piece of glass, rub the spot with a small amount of oil using a paper towel. The adhesive should come right off. Rinse and wash the glass with warm, soapy water to remove oil residue.
- To remove paper that is stuck to a wood surface, place a few drops of salad oil on the paper and let it soak. The paper should simply rub away.
- Remove tar from an unwanted surface by rubbing olive oil on the tar and letting it soak. The olive oil will soften the tar, making it easy to remove.
____________________
And here's something really useful that you can do with oils: Pest and mold/rot/blight control
Many vegetable oils will do the trick and I think they should still work even if they are used oils.
Of course, since the idea is to use the vegetable oil in a solution that then is sprayed, you will want the oil to be relatively clean of things that might clog up whatever you will be using to spray.
Aphids
Anyhow, if you have grown plants, herbs and so on, you have probably already had to deal with aphids, or plant lice, at one point or another. They invade really fast and can kill your plant by sucking the sap out of the plant. Besides, they excretions increase the odds of fungus growths and they can carry plant diseases.
Now, using insecticides is usually not the best idea, at least if you will be eating the herbs afterwards. So here's a natural solution using vegetable oil that will get rid of your aphids fast, without harming the plant, and without putting poisons in your food. (you can, and probably will want to make it in smaller quantities of course)
- about 3,8-4 litres of water
- 2,5 soup spoons of vegetable oil (I used sunflower, but the on the web you hear talk of so many different oils being used I get the impression most of them will do)
- 0,5 tea spoons of detergent (like dish washing detergent for example)
= what this does is soften the aphids' exosqueleton so that they simply dry out)
Mildew
Against Powdery Mildew and blight the solution is pretty much the same except you add
- 1 soup spoon of Baking Powder
The oil helps the baking powder stick and make the environment extremely agressive for the spores of the mold. This solution (or others along the same lines) can in fact be used as a preventive measure to avoid mildew setting in being used then once every two or three weeks.
This formula is apparently called 'The Cornell Formula' as it was developed there and is usually as effective commercial fungicides (or so I just learned while writing this).
http://www.helium.com/items/937597-how-to-use-baking-soda-for-powdery-mildew
Note however, that if Mildew is very widely spread in a garden, it might be too late to do anything but severely pruning the plants because no solution or commercial fungicide will save it.
No comments:
Post a Comment