Bring your used cooking oil to the Gobble Grease Toss

Go green on Black Friday at the Gobble Grease Toss! If you fry your turkey on Thanksgiving, bring your used cooking oil to the Redwood Cooperative School, 166 Crestwood Drive, on Friday, November 29 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to be recycled.

The fifteenth annual Gobble Grease Toss is a partnership between the City of Lexington, the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research, Redwood School and Kelley Green Biofuel. Every year, Lexington residents recycle hundreds of gallons of cooking oil to keep it out of the landfill and bring attention to the harm caused by pouring cooking oil down the drain.

Some of the used cooking oil will be used for biofuel research at UK CAER, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Kelley Green Biofuel will convert the rest of the used cooking oil into renewable fuel.

"We at CAER are excited for this opportunity to connect our community to our research. This is a simple yet impactful way to help advance biofuel research and solutions for cleaner, renewable energy," said Eduardo Santillan-Jimenez, Associate Director of the UK CAER and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the UK Department of Chemistry.

Redwood Cooperative School is looking forward to co-hosting the Gobble Grease Toss for the ninth year. "Our students are always excited to help with the Gobble Grease Toss," said Sarah Cummins, Head of Redwood. "Some of them started helping in kindergarten and are now in middle school. They see year after year how our choices have an impact on the environment and their future, and we enjoy witnessing the capacity they have for sharing that knowledge with the greater community. Our students are happy to help everyone be a little greener this holiday season."

The Gobble Grease Toss is free for all Fayette County residents (no businesses). Bring your cooking oil in a disposable container, hard-sided container with a lid. Do not bring cooking oil in a bag. Remain in your car and a volunteer will remove the cooking oil for you.

If you cannot make it to the Gobble Grease Toss, you can properly dispose of cooking oil by letting it solidify in the refrigerator and throwing it away in your green trash cart. Cooking oil should never be poured down sink drains, as it can clog pipes in both your home and the city's sewer system.