Recycling Used Cooking Oil for Earth Day

Households are encouraged to ‘stop and think, not down the sink’ for used cooking oil this Earth Day. Organisers are aiming to reach 2 billion ‘acts of green’ across the world for Earth Day on April 22 this year, and you can help by recycling your used cooking oil.

Recycling your used cooking oil is a powerful change you can make for your act of green. Your family can make a huge difference if you ‘stop and think, not down the sink’ when it comes to disposing of your waste oil. Pouring oil down the drain is throwing away a valuable sustainable energy resource. Instead, save your used cooking oil in a bottle or jar, and bring it to your nearest waste recycling centre.

The goal of Earth Day this year is to generate awareness of how important a sustainable future is for our planet. Recycling oil is an easy change to make. The waste cooking oil is recovered using natural settling and filtering and used in eco-friendly power stations to generate clean energy for National Grid in times of power shortages. Using filtered cooking oil as fuel is completely environmentally friendly because unlike other methods of oil recovery, no chemicals or intensive heating processes are used.

By recycling your used cooking oil, you are ensuring homes across Britain have ample energy without introducing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. Just one litre of cooking oil can power your kettle for 240 cups of tea. UK homes could be powered with sustainable and environmentally friendly energy out of something that would otherwise be poured down the sink.

Not only does recycling your used cooking play its part in improving the condition of the world’s climate, you also keep your waterways clear. When oil is poured down drains, colder temperatures cause it to solidify and create blockages knows as fatbergs, massive boulders of fat. These clogs collect harmful soaps washed down sinks, which strip waterways of oxygen killing the environment.

Ian Collins, director at REG Living Fuels says, “For Earth Day, we are urging households across Britain to remember how important recycling used cooking oil is for a sustainable future. Relying on fossil fuels for power is harming our planet.

 “If you want to make a change to help the planet, make your first step an easy one. There are 500 used cooking oil collection points across the UK. Find yours today, for a greener tomorrow.”