What is Brown Grease
Brown grease is generated in food service establishments from fats, oils, and grease in food products. It is collected in grease traps and interceptors. Almost all brown grease is being sent to landfills. Click on an thumbnail below to view a larger image of brown grease traps.
Restaurants and other food service businesses generate literally tons of cooking oil, grease and food wastes every day. If this waste is not managed prop-erly, it can cause major environmental problems.
The Problem
Grease is currently estimated to account for 70 percent of sewer plant blockages and 30 percent of pump station failures by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
More and more municipalities are implementing stringent grease ordinances resulting in exponentially more Grease trap waste to dispose of while less and less disposal sites are taking the troublesome material.
Non-compliance is rampant and regulators are cracking down on poorly maintained traps and trap grease collectors, but disposal options are limited and expensive. Few wastewater treatment plants accept grease trap waste and haulers are forced to drive long distances and pay high tipping fees for grease disposal. The few plants that do accept grease were not designed to accommodate the large volumes of grease they receive and are plagued by equipment downtime and grease related failures.
More often than not, waste water treatment utilities refuse to take grease trap waste because it is extremely difficult to process or dispose 
of. When a disposal site can be found, disposal fees can be as high as $.25 per gallon, or more!
Currently brown grease is a cost to the principle stakeholders. Restaurants pay to dispose of it. Pumping companies often regard the hauling of brown grease to be a “loss-leader” and municipalities have to deal with sewage overflows caused by brown grease. Yet, the potential energy value of brown grease is high.
Brown grease, also known as trap grease, causes more than half of sewage overflows for the local water and sewer department. And the cost of a single grease vacuum, used to scrub the city’s sewer system, totals about $300,000.
All the food-service businesses have to have a grease trap underneath and even with best of care, it still gets in wastewater pipes.
ABF feels that there is a need for recycling of brown grease. Instead of disposing of it, we turn an unwanted product into a reusable product.