There are a billion reasons DeKalb apartment complexes should recycle cooking oil and other grease, according to County Commissioner Stan Watson.
Watson is thinking of the $1.35 billion DeKalb is spending to overhaul its water and sewer system to meet a federal mandate to stop sewer spills, 73 percent of which the county says are caused by grease, fat and oil building up in the sewer lines.
But as a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation revealed, none of the projects DeKalb has planned does much more than clean out the existing grease, fat and oil in the sewer lines.
Watson wants to peel some of that money away to launch a recycling program that sets up bins at apartments and to collect the pan drippings that, once purified, can sell for $3.25 a gallon.
“My wife right now has a pot on our stove full of grease. It’s not hard to do,” he said. “Folks can bring it down like they do their trash.”
The county’s water department is focused on coming up with a plan to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s consent decree, which requires DeKalb to make $700 million in improvements to its sewer system over the next eight years.
The county already is tacking on other projects to improve its water system and also repair area waterways fouled by spills. Still, the recycling idea is worth consideration, said Ted Rhinehart, DeKalb’s deputy chief operating officer for infrastructure.
“All of these things are worth looking at as we put our plan together for the EPA,” Rhinehart said.
Residential grease collection is not a new idea. The challenge is educating people about participating.
Two DeKalb cities, Clarkston and Stone Mountain, already offer grease recycling to residents. But participation is spotty and there has been little follow-up on how the program is working, officials in those cities said.
Meanwhile, most grease recycling in Georgia stems from the state’s regulation of commercial grease. Georgia requires restaurants and food processors to collect the fat and oil they use in grease traps, then have the goo pumped out so it doesn’t end up in sewer lines.
Apartments, condos and townhomes often generate as much grease as a restaurant, but without any state oversight. Industry insiders say that volume could mean money for the county if DeKalb could figure out a way to collect enough waste.
“If they could get up an effective collecting system, I could process it and give the county a portion of the profits,” said James Lee, owner of a Doraville-based grease recycler, Waste Processing LLC.
Watson wants to discuss his idea and other proposals at a commission committee meeting Thursday. Any formal plans or recommendations are likely months off, but Watson said he wants to at least begin the discussion.
“Grease is a problem and recycling is a solution,” he said. “There has to be a way we can do this.”
The county’s public works committee will meet at 1 p.m. Thursday at the Manuel Maloof building, 1300 Commerce Drive, Decatur.
There are a billion reasons that apartment complexes should recycle housing cooking oil and other grease to DeKalb County Commissioner Stan Watson.
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