Feed the Barrel: Indonesian Community’s Project to Save The Environment
By: Indah Nuritasri
Asians, including Indonesians, love to cook with oil. It means, when there’s cooking, there’s oil – and where does all that cooking oil go?
Pouring used cooking oil down the drain usually is the common way out. But many don’t understand the impacts, that the oil can stick to the sides of the home’s sewer pipes, build up and block entire pipes which means raw sewage can overflow into the house, yard, street, neighbor’s house, or waterway. It also means an expensive and messy cleanup and our family might have contact with disease-causing organisms from the sewage. That’s why to avoid this mess, water departments recommend collecting grease and greasy food scraps in a container to throw in the trash for disposal.
The Indonesian community in South Philadelphia, however, has a better idea. With the support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they created Feed the Barrel, Philadelphia’s first residential cooking oil recycling program, save up their cooking oil in empty containers and take it to more than 10 oil recycling drop-off barrels at churches or community centers. On a regular basis, an oil recycling company will pick up the oil, pay for each gallon collected, and use the oil to make electricity (bio-fuel) and compost. The money made from the oil collected goes toward improving the community.
In Indonesia, families have more space so dumping used cooking oil outside was never an issue. But in Philadelphia, where open space is limited, many Indonesians- as well as other Asians, resort to throwing away their oil after cooking with it or pouring it down the drain. “We as a community never dealt with this problem in our country before,” Cut Zahara, Feed The Barrel manager says. “ now we know how to do it better.”
Sage Piszek, Sales Manager from EDE says working with Feed the Barrel is Eden Green Energy’s first experience recycling oil in a residential setting. The company usually works with restaurants and hotels. Piszek is optimistic that once people get educated, more people will drop off their used oil. he says. “We’re hoping by the end of the year all the barrels will be full of oil ” Piszek says.
Lena Kim from EPA explains that Feed the Barrel is part of the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge, a voluntary program that asks participants to reduce their food waste since more than 40 percent of our food ends up in the landfill. “The agency wanted to take a community-wide approach to see whether oil disposal education and collection points would work,” Kim says. And so far, according to Kim, Feed The Barrel has exceeded the expectations
