City cooks up new way to recycle

Pat Kimbrough, The High Point Enterprise, N.C.
·2 min read

Apr. 18—HIGH POINT — If you're not sure what to do with the grease from your frying pan, the city of High Point has you covered.

The city recently established two collection sites for residents to drop off used cooking oil to be recycled into biodiesel fuel.

Tanks at the Material Recovery Facility, 5875 Riverdale Drive, and the Ingleside Compost Facility, 3001 Ingleside Drive, can accept cooking oil as well as cooking byproducts such as solidified lard, Crisco and bacon grease.

City Recycling Program Coordinator Teresa Baker said it's important to keep these materials out of the wastewater and stormwater collection systems and out of garbage trucks.

"I'm hoping this will take off and that we can add locations for it," she said. "People use different methods to cook things, and so it's great to have this option available."

She came up with the idea for the program, which is modeled on those of other communities.

"I used to work with Granville County, and we had them at our convenience sites where people would drop off recycling," she said. "They've always been a great service to have. We got a huge response from churches and different civic groups that would do fish fries and needed a place to dispose of their used cooking oil and make sure that it was being used for a good purpose."

The program comes at no cost to the city.

The containers at the two sites are owned by a company called Greasecycle that collects the contents and takes them to its facility, where it's refined into biodiesel, a type of renewable fuel.

The city is offering the program as a public service, and Baker said it's not designed to accommodate commercial cooking oil from restaurants, although it could accept it from food truck festivals.

"It's not a huge commodity, but it's a good way to recycle it and send it down a different path," she said.

The city is also collecting used cooking oil from City Lake Park picnic shelters. Patrons are asked to leave their used oil in the containers they brought it in "and we will collect it. That way, it's not being poured on the ground or down storm drains," Baker said. "Being able to leave it behind and dispose of it on site is great instead of having to put it in the trash or take it with them."