Shanghai tightens regulation on collection of used cooking oil from restaurants

Shanghai’s new regulation to prevent the use and collection of used cooking oil from restaurants has taken effect. Businesses that break the law could face a fine of up to 100,000 yuan (US$16,000).
The regulation is the city’s latest attempt to curb the use of “gutter oil”, or reprocessed kitchen oil that is illegally recycled and then used at restaurants.
Officials said a seamless system will be built by establishing a complete and new management chain in Shanghai.
“We used to regard waste oil as garbage, and restaurants needed to pay a ‘garbage fee’ to the government for its disposal. But from now on, it joins the list of ‘resources’ that we’d purchase from restaurants at a fair price,” said Liu Ping, an official with the Shanghai government’s legislative affairs office.
Price setting would be guided by the Shanghai Restaurants Cuisine Association, Shanghai Food Association and Shanghai City Appearance and Environmental Sanitation Association to ensure “fair trading”, according to Cui Liping, deputy Party chief of the Shanghai Landscaping Administration Bureau.
“I believe it would be a fairly attractive price to prevent the waste oil leaking into the black market as we listened to both opinions of restaurants and recycling companies,” said Cui, adding that the price would be changed from time to time according to the three associations’ guidelines as well as the price of fossil oil.
Cui said about 70 to 80 metric tons of waste cooking oil is produced in Shanghai’s estimated 35,000 restaurants every day.
Restaurants in Shanghai were ordered to install machines by the end of last year that separate oil and grease before the substances enter the city’s sewage system, thus making it impossible to retrieve them.
According to Gu Zhenhua, deputy director of the city’s food safety agency, more than 98 percent of Shanghai’s restaurants have the machines.
“We’ve got it (the machine), but nobody has told us to use it so far,” said Shirley Huang, a spokeswoman for Madison, a Western-style restaurant. Huang said restaurants in Shanghai are no longer allowed to find their own waste oil collectors. Instead, the government has entrusted the job to appointed collectors in different districts.
The new system also supervises the waste oil’s transportation process by installing electronic monitoring equipment and the recycling company’s selection process by inviting public bidding.
“We’ve got two recycling companies on the list so far, but they’ll be watched even though they’re already on the list. It’s possible that we will kick them out if anything goes wrong,” said Cui, adding that the waste oil will be turned into biodiesel. (February 28, 2013)