Is FryAway the Best Way to Dispose of Cooking Oil?

The only ingredient listed on the FryAway package is “natural plant-based fats,” but it looks and works just like stearic acid, a saturated fatty acid that’s naturally found in animal and vegetable fats. It’s the same stuff used to make candles, bars of soap, and your fancy shea butter.

In an email, a FryAway representative said that the product is patent-pending and the manufacturer won’t disclose the ingredients or formulation but that “it can be expected to have some naturally occurring stearic acid.”

I didn’t chemically analyze the FryAway to see if it’s indeed stearic acid or some kind of blend, but I did purchase stearic acid to do a side-by-side comparison. Gram for gram, the stearic acid gelatinized the same amount of mixed refuse cooking oil and pork fat in the same amount of time as the FryAway, though it was just slightly less hard.

The instructions say to turn off the heat source and remove food from the oil, then sprinkle FryAway flakes into the hot oil and stir to dissolve completely. This took several seconds for me, but it depends on the temperature of the oil. Allow the oil to cool and harden, then scoop it into your garbage, organic waste bin, or compost. It took about 30 minutes to solidify one-third cup of oil in my pan and about an hour to solidify a quart of oil in my deep-fryer. I found it was easy to scoop and discard.

Assuming FryAway does contain stearic acid and the product performs similarly, it hydrogenates liquid oil by melting it into hot oil (stearic acid’s melting point is 156.7° F) and hardening the oil as it cools. In effect, it raises the melting point of the oil so that it remains solid at room temperature. 

The company says the hardened mixture can reliquefy at temperatures exceeding 115° F.

Fats, oils, and grease (what the waste industry refers to as FOG) are the bane of any plumber’s or water treatment worker’s existence. And “the more unwanted waste we can keep out of waterways, the fewer contaminants for our wastewater and drinking water treatment facilities to clean out of waters we use for drinking and recreational activities like fishing or swimming,” says Shanika Whitehurst, CR’s associate director of product sustainability, research, and testing.

FOGs might start out in a liquid state, but the materials can congeal and eventually cause clogs farther downstream. Rebecca Shelton, a water and wastewater engineer in the Atlanta metro area, says that in many areas of the U.S., grease causes up to 65 percent of sewer overflows.

The alternative is often pouring FOGs into a container, like a used plastic tub or zipper bag, and tossing it in a trash can. This is much better than adding them to wastewater, but trashing FOGs has a few of its own drawbacks. Plastic containers can break, causing a slippery, smelly mess, either for you or your garbage collector. And if it’s the plastic you’re concerned about, it’s most likely going to end up in a landfill anyway, so you’re not necessarily doing the planet any good by saving it for recycling. 

“I’d rather have the oil loose and not in a container, because then the microbial population can get a hold of it as an energy source and convert it to methane, which is captured in most of these landfills and converted into renewable energy,” says Jason White, founder and CEO of Lee Enterprises Consulting, a bio-economy consulting group.

In this case, using FryAway or similar products to discard your used cooking oil is actually better for the environment—and everyone involved, for that matter. Solidified oil is more convenient for home cooks to discard, remains gelatinized during garbage collection, and gives microbes something to chomp on. Once the oil hits the landfill, it might reach temperatures that will reliquefy it, but at that point, it’s fine.

The ideal way to discard your old oils, White says, isn’t yet available to most people, and that’s curbside oil pickup and recycling. Instead of going to a landfill, your used cooking oil could be turned into biodiesel fuel. “We often don’t see long-term solutions as well as we should, and focus too prominently on short-term fixes,” White says. “The key is for the voters to tell their elected officials what’s important to them.”

Until curbside oil pickup comes to your neighborhood, your best option for discarding used cooking oil is to solidify it. But here’s the thing: It doesn’t need to be FryAway.

Sure, the brand is well-known, convenient, and available at Amazon and Walmart. But I was able to find a handful of other oil solidifiers on Amazon (Hard Oil, Quickshine, and SolidiFry) that worked just as well for about $1 to $2.50 less per ounce. FryAway Pan Fry was the most expensive at $4.28 per ounce. But here’s the real kicker: Stearic acid costs only $1 per ounce. So if you’re looking to save money, consider buying a bag of stearic acid and use 2 tablespoons per cup of hot oil.