Grease traps and FOG rules for Donegal food businesses

Who it applies to

Uisce Éireann's guidance covers restaurants, takeaways, pubs serving food, cafés, hotels, B&Bs and shops with deli counters.¹ If you run a food business, you produce trade effluent.¹

Trade effluent licence

Servicing your trap

Grease traps should be serviced to the manufacturer's recommendations, with records kept of all maintenance and servicing.¹ How often that works out depends on the size of the trap and how much fat your kitchen produces. A busy fryer menu fills a trap far faster than a café doing soup and sandwiches.

Signs a trap is overdue:

• A rancid smell near the trap or floor drains.
• Pot-wash and prep sinks draining slowly.
• Fat showing in the outlet chamber or the drain downstream.
• Nobody can say when it was last emptied.

Why it matters

Fats, oils and grease poured down sinks combine with wipes, hair and other waste in the pipes to form fatbergs.² In a kitchen that means blocked drains, smells and, at worst, closing during service while it's sorted.

In the kitchen

• Scrape plates and pans into the bin before washing.
• Collect used cooking oil and fat for disposal. It goes in the bin, not down the sink.²
• Keep a log of every trap service with your maintenance file.¹

Need your trap emptied, or a regular schedule set up? Ring Ryan on 085 195 6808.