French fries: one of the most delicious foods a mother (or a fast-food restaurant) can make to delight her children. To make fries, a large amount of oil is necessary. All restaurants of the world, whether big or small, need that substance too. Can a diet by completely free of any sort of oil?

No, and that’s a part of the problem. Cooking oil (to avoid being boring, this article focuses on that one, and some other day we’ll talk about industrial oils and fuels) is one of the largest -and most serious- generators of water contamination. And since it’s so widely used in every little or big kitchen in the world, focusing on this problematic becomes critical, especially if we have in mind that worldwide vegetable oil consumption in 2008 reached 120 million tons, headed by the use of palm and soybean oils.

Let’s go further into this matter, which combines environment, culinary art and waste disposal. Quite a peculiar, challenging and little-known mix.

Beware of the oil

Both housewives and professional chefs have something in common: most of them know getting rid of cooking oil by disposing it from the kitchen sink is “politically incorrect”, though many times they don’t know why.

“Once in the water, the oil contaminates the flora and fauna because it floats on the surface and prevents oxygenation and lighting”, explains engineer Nicolás Apro to Opinión Sur Joven. He’s the director of the cereal and oilseed division at Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial (National Institute of Industrial Technology. The lack of light affects the biodiversity in the ecosystems of rivers and lakes.

Despite one of the most exaggerated statements we can find on the Net, which claims that one liter of oil contaminates a million liters of water [1], Apro says that “a liter of oil contaminates at least hundreds of liters of water”.

Oils used by industries and mainly by restaurants and bars are generally stored in metal drums and delivered to a company that’s supposedly in charge of recycling it to reuse it for non-human purposes.

After household use, the liquid usually ends up in the sewer of the house or apartment, eventually contaminating the rivers and lakes where these conduits end. “That ends up clogging the sewer, and some people throw the oil to the toilet, which also represents a serious interference in the consequent purification process of the water”, he adds.

Sometimes, both in households and restaurants, consumers think the solution is to store the oil in closed containers inside or outside the garbage can, and then get rid of them. “Then, when the container is compressed in the garbage truck, it generates a disaster. Another common solution is to burn it, which represents a serious damage to the environment”, Apro points out.

So it seems there’s nothing to do. But there is. The best choice would be resorting to a recycling company. Otherwise, the second best thing to do is to keep throwing it to the garbage can, because that way at least the sewer won’t be blocked. But, for now, there isn’t an ideal solution.

Considering this scenario, Argentina’s technology institute launched a program to create awareness among the population and, at the same time, reduce the level of contamination cause by these bad habits.

The project consists in building a network among hotels and restaurants to have them store the oil they no longer use. The containers would be picked up by a company that would recycle the oil for future non-human uses.

One of the most interesting possible uses of recycled oil is its transformation into biodiesel: used vegetable oil may be recycled into fuel, thus replacing fossil fuels. The INTI is working on this project along with Epor, the only company -up to now- with a factory that has been approved and certified to produce biodiesel with vegetable oil. “It’s an important detail, because there’s a wide black market of companies that collect oil and don’t process it: they throw it away anywhere, because that’s more profitable”, Apro says. This project is already taking place in the Argentine cities of Miramar, Mar del Plata and Bariloche.

Regarding households, Argentina’s technology institute is trying to work with the population, so that instead of disposing the oil from the kitchen sink -thus ruining the effluent and the future treatment of that water-, neighborhoods collect it. “The idea is that kids take their oil containers to school and the collection be made in bulk. In that way, environment care is also encouraged among young people”, Apro assures. The school would then call the collecting company, which will pay for the material. The program is starting to work in La Matanza, in Buenos Aires province.

Recycling oil into biodiesel has two main advantages: not only does it prevent water contamination, but it also generates biofuel, the combustion of which -as we’ve already explained in this section several times- doesn’t generate greenhouse gases, unlike the most harmful fossil oils (petroleum, gas, carbon).

Beware of the cooks

Due to the tremendous amounts of oil they use in the kitchen, chefs are key factors in this process. Imagine if all cooks in the world combined their efforts to contribute to a recycling network to turn cooking oil into biodiesel. Things would be different (and so would contamination).

Opinión Sur Joven interviewed a representative of culinary professionals in Argentina, chef Belén Guglielmo. She’s 27 years old and worked at a first-class hotel restaurant; today she offers her services through two catering companies.

Belén tells us the oil used in restaurant kitchens is generally poured into jars or plastic bags filled with papers to absorb it, which unfortunately doesn’t end up in a recycling process.

As a worthy Generation X member, Belén says she’s aware of the fact that oil contaminates water, although she doesn’t “exactly know how”. She says she’s the one who generally insists in being careful with these issues in the kitchens she works at. “Some chefs don’t care at all about this problem, and this subject in particular isn’t usually discussed”, she admits.

As soon as she learns about the possibility to recycle cooking oil to stop affecting the environment, our interviewed chef shows interest. “Obviously, if I could, I’d do it, especially knowing it’s to take care of the environment, because I worry very much about the future of my children in this world. But I only notice awareness regarding these issues in more experienced chefs. I think such negligence is due to lack of knowledge; we need more education on this”, she thinks, and she requests a more active role of cooking schools regarding these environmental aspects.

Belén hits a nerve: education and companies. The remaining vertex of the triangle is represented by Argentina’s technology institute and its programs. These three legs of the same table show us once again that they must work together if we want to have a better quality of life. And we can make it by starting with the smallest things. Like the kitchen.

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