Is It Legal To Pour Your Cooking Grease Down The Drain In Texas?
What do you do with your used cooking grease?
Some people are very economical and use only enough oil for what they're doing, and/or store the rest for next time. But what if you've had, say a fish fry and there's just more used oil than you can store?
First off, the state (and probably elsewhere) likes to refer to this as F.O.G. F.O.G. stands for fats, oils, and grease. Next up, it's an incredibly bad idea to put grease down your drain. It may cause you serious drain problems later and it can create buildup and terrible problems all the way down the line.
You should also not just throw your grease outside. That grease will eventually wash down into the sewer system or water table and create problems. In addition, outdoor grease is like an attractant for varmints. Mice, raccoons, and other outdoor scavengers are big fans of grease.
So what do you do with your used cooking grease? You are supposed to put it in a sealed, unbreakable container and put it in the trash. If you have a huge amount of cooking oil, there are places, including some restaurants that will let you dispose of it.
So is it illegal to put F.O.G. down your drain? I could find no statute that expressly prohibits you from doing so. It's also not like the police are going to track that grease back to your house and arrest you. What will happen is, you will pay for it with clogging drains and sewers, stinky pipes, and increasing costs of city services (if it costs them more to treat water, the costs will eventually be passed on to you).
Let's just say that it may not be illegal, but it's a terrible idea.