Why Grease Makes a Restaurant Dumpster Smell Worse

Grease in a dumpster smells worse than ordinary garbage because it stays behind and keeps changing. The bags leave on the truck; the fat that leaked out of them stays on the walls and floor, and fat exposed to air and heat turns rancid — the sour, stale-oil smell that hangs over an enclosure even after collection.

Three things happen at once:

• It coats. Warm grease runs down the walls and across the floor, then cools into a film.
• It traps. The film is sticky, so rice, breading and scraps from torn bags stay behind every week.
• It turns. Rancid fat plus rotting food smells heavier than either alone, and a South Florida dumpster never cools down enough to slow it.

Grease does not wash out of a dumpster with a hose because grease repels water. A hose at tap pressure carries off loose debris, but the film underneath stays — so a rinsed dumpster can look better and smell the same by afternoon. Grease also firms overnight and softens in the sun, picking up grit each cycle until it is a crust, and bleach poured over a crust only perfumes the top of it.

Yes. Grease is concentrated food, and a greasy dumpster feeds flies, roaches and rodents even with the lid shut, because the residue is on the rim, lid and outside walls too.

Florida's Division of Hotels and Restaurants adopts Chapter 5 of the 2017 FDA Food Code in Rule 61C-1.001, F.A.C., and the Food Code says:

• Outdoor refuse receptacles must be kept covered "with tight-fitting lids or doors" (§ 5-501.113).
• Drains in refuse receptacles "shall have drain plugs in place" (§ 5-501.114).
• Soiled receptacles must be cleaned "at a frequency necessary to prevent them from developing a buildup of soil or becoming attractants for insects and rodents" (§ 5-501.116).

Grease works against all three. A crusted lid stops closing flat, a missing plug lets greasy liquid run onto the pad, and the buildup itself is the attractant the rule describes.

Restaurant grease should go into one of two systems, never the dumpster. Fryer oil and liquid cooking grease go into the used-cooking-oil container your oil collector services. Grease that goes down sinks and dishwashers is caught by the grease trap or interceptor, which a hauler pumps out.

Miami-Dade County spells out the second part in its FOG fact sheet: a grease trap holds fats, oils and grease "until it is removed by a certified liquid waste hauler", and it tells kitchens to dry wipe pots and pans and to use absorbents such as cat litter or paper towels on oil spills before mopping.

Those wipes end up in the trash, and that is fine. The line is between a little grease soaked into paper and liquid grease poured in:

1. 01Never pour fryer oil, pan drippings or a half-full oil jug into the dumpster or a trash bag.
2. 02Let pans cool, wipe them with paper towels, and bag and tie the towels.
3. 03Double-bag wet, greasy food waste, close the lid after every trip and keep the drain plug in.
4. 04Wipe up drips on the way to the used-oil container; they land on the dumpster's pad.

The BinFather does not clean grease traps or used-cooking-oil containers; those belong to your hauler and oil collector.

The grease smell comes out of a restaurant dumpster with heat and high pressure on the inside walls, the floor, the lid, the rim and the pad underneath, done together after collection, when the container is empty.

That is how The BinFather approaches dumpster cleaning for restaurants in South Florida. We schedule it outside your service hours, bring our own water, and the dirty water goes into a collection tank on our truck or trailer — nothing is left on your property. Pricing runs from $99 for a single container and changes with how many containers you have, their size and how often they need doing.

A restaurant dumpster that takes greasy waste should be cleaned as often as it takes to stop residue from building up. The Food Code sets that outcome, not a number of weeks; it depends on menu, volume and kitchen habits.

The signs: a tacky film on the lid, flies on a closed container, a dark ring on the pad. If they return within weeks of a cleaning, the schedule is too long or grease is still getting in. Restaurants from Hialeah to Boca Raton work in the same heat, and it does not take a season off.