Fats, oils and grease in your pipes can result in an expensive plumbing repair bill. Overflows and backups can also damage your home’s interior and threaten the environment.
What you can do
Follow these simple guidelines.
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Cool and collect fats, oil and grease in a covered container and put them in a rubbish bin. Find out more about where to dispose of cooking oil.
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Scrape pots and pans into your rubbish bin before rinsing and washing.
- Add a strainer to your sink to catch food scraps and other solids that can collect with any fats and create a blockage.
Restaurants and other businesses
Restaurants and other food-handling businesses are a significant source of fats, oil and grease. To prevent blockages, we recommend:
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Cool and collect fats, oil and grease in a covered container and use a commercial collector to pick these up.
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Use a commercial service to clean the filters in your ventilation hood.
- Install a grease trap and have it commercially cleaned regularly to keep it working properly.
Grease trap approval process
When it comes to trade waste, we share joint responsibility with our friends at Auckland Council. They assesses applications against the provisions of the New Zealand Building Code and our job is to assess applications against the Auckland Trade Waste Bylaw 2013.
Under the New Zealand Building Code, wastewater discharges must comply with G13 Foul Water. G13/AS2 provides an acceptable solution for grease traps. Grease interceptors and digesters are alternative solutions and generally require approval from us. We will accept other types of grease traps so long as they are designed to comply with the Council Trade Waste Bylaw 2013 and WATERCARE Standards.
If you are asked by Auckland Council to seek approval for your specific grease trap or grease converter, you must supply the following to us:
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A statement from the grease converter supplier. This statement must state that if the specified grease converter is installed and maintained in accordance with their specifications then the wastewater discharged from the device during the proposed activities of the facility will meet all requirements of Auckland Trade Waste Bylaw 2013.
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A maintenance contract for the servicing of the grease converter.
Email the above information to
[email protected] and a compliance advisor will be in touch with an approval letter.
Resources for restaurants
Restaurants and food-handling businesses can display and distribute these to kitchen staff:
Don't pour fats, oils or grease down the sink, drain or toilet A3 PDF poster (574KB)
Do the right thing with fats, oils or grease A4 brochure in English with Mandarin (Chinese) translation (2.25MB)