Dumping vegetable oils, such as cannola, on the ground is as hazardous as dumping petroleum products. Check with your local resturants and they might add your small qauntity to what they send out to be recycled, but do not put it in your compost or on your soil anywhere.

Whole foods takes used cooking oil to be recycled. If you contact them, not all the stores will, but there is one near me that will. They make it into bio dispel.

But, why is it dangerous? I was told here I can add some chicken fat to the compost bin, but I assume vegetable fats are healthier then animals fats. I think you can can compost in small amounts in an active pile without harm. For example I often baste the chicken with olive oil and compost the left over fat in the bin now, and I can find no difference in my compost since doing that.

But, it is not the same as whole gallon from a deep fat fryer, but still my bacteria seem to eat it up. I find no traces. The finished compost is not gloppy, but dry just like normal.

I would dump it on noxious weeds.

I either burn when I have a fire outside or put it in the alley to control dust.

Putting vegetable oils on soils is just as bad as putting petroleum oils on soils. While there are bacteia that will, eventually, digest those materials the soil they are poured onto becomes useless for a very long time. Most states have laws that prohibit disposing of oils on the soil and prohibit using oils to control dust on roads.

Does this mean that composting a chicken or a turkey is bad for the compost? I was thinking about it a lot.

I found a post in which the deep fat frying oil is bad, but that is only because the heating changes the oil into a form in which it is no longer healthy. That is what I think. If the oil was fresh and not a lot of it, I don't think it will harm stuff.

Send it to my dog. He'll dispose of it without any harm to the environment.:)

"I want to bury it..."

Shouldn't be a problem if it is below the soil active level. Here, that's roughly two feet in amended dirt, less in virgin areas.

There was a long ago poster on this board, Metaxa, who described a "soil digester" for grease, oils and bones, cat litter and other questionable organic material. If you cannot find the info in a search, ask.

IMO, the quantity described would be no problem in a cubic yard or larger hot compost pile. I compost everything about carnivores but their feces (done in a seperate pile) and never have issues...but minimum 1yd.size and managed C:N ratios are essential.

An old yardener's tip, mix the oil with some sand in a bucket and keep your steel tools there.

If a dog eats a lot of fats he will get fat and may have heart disease. Seriously dogs do get the same problems people get. You can actually put it the green bin to take away to the city compost dump, which is a big dump and all foods are ok in it, they say. That keeps it out of land fills. But, if it is large amounts of used cooking oil it can go to whole foods for recycling into bio diesel. But, I did stop composting chickens and turkeys because it made my dog too obessed with the compost. He was trying to eat my pile when I took it out of the bin for turning. He had to be locked in the house and barked the whole time. I used to have a dog who would eat young compost and then throw up yellow bile. It was a problem, I had to age my compost longer and I was not even composting chickens back then. I also had one who would never touch compost ever. He was a good dog for me. Dogs vary on their levels of compost consuming.

I agree that poured on the surface it could make an area difficult for anything to grow in for awhile. If buried I don't see how it could ruin the soil though. The suggestion that it's as hazardous as petroleum is overblown in my opinion. Petroleum products are (most of them) full of toxins, which vegetable oil is not. If this were true, we could do our deep frying in used motor oil. It'd be so much cheaper!

I've given away used oil to people who make their own biodiesel. You can post it on Freecycle or the free section of Craigslist. People may not want to make the trip for a gallon, depending on where you are.

I recently poured used canola oil in the compost bin/worm farm. It just nuked all the worms and bugs and the compost now has a funny slightly chemical smell and greasy look. There were 100's of worms - now nothing - not even any small bugs. Very disappointing the worms were going great. I have poured other oil in soil before and noticed how the worms congregated there after a few days. This was not canola oil though.Before - had a pleasant organic decomposing aroma - now it is just greasy gunk.

Oil will definitely kill worms, it covers them and makes it impossible for them to breathe. If I had to dispose of oil in compost, I'd soak the oil up in something absorbent - wood chips or cardboard, for example. I have composted oil-laden cardboard successfully, and read about an operation where they composted oils and fats this way. But to be done in moderation and very carefully or not at all if there are worms. The idea is that the material keeps the oil in it until aerobic microbes eat it. The material should not be dripping though so you'd need a lot of cardboard.

Will it kill fire ants?

Several days ago I fed my beloved fire ants with the delicious oil from a fryer . They did not rebuild their mounts yet neither I see new one nearby. Hopefully it is a remedy .

In composts, there are worms in action, bacteria, chemical action -alkaline and acidic reactions, temperature - heat, oxidization, bugs that eat cellulose like small pale centipedes, the carbon/nitrogen ratio etc. all designed to gradually break things back down to soil. I have composted for 30 years one of the best materials are lawn clippings and leaf mulch. An old man I did a job for started me off in gardening and composting. He used to have lawn mower guys dump clippings at his house for free. He must have been 90+, he was into healthy living, he made his own kefir drink etc. He was very active for his age, full of energy.