A boon with a catch

Grease. It’s a topic with many unsavory connotations. No, this isn’t about the ’70s musical, but rather the substance which happens to be the bane of food service employees, sanitation workers and others in the food industry.

Together with solid waste, the kitchen by-products are the curse of many eating establishments. Once mixed down the drain, they choke pipes, coalesce into pulpy blockages, create bigger problems if left alone, and turn into a headache that requires a lot of time – and money – to treat.

For restaurateurs everywhere, fats, oils and greases can become a full-blown debacle. Every few months, restaurants are required by city codes to clean out their 1,000-gallon-or-bigger grease traps of the hundreds of pounds of accumulated food scraps and waste from dirty dishes. Then the process starts over: Collect. Clean. Repeat.

A new distribution company that specializes in drain filtration systems aims at easing that burden of waste management for businesses.

North Idaho locals Trevor Johnson and Pat Capone are the distributors for Rhino Environmental Solutions, a Florida-based business that offers the Rhino Wet Waste Filtration System. The filter is a biodegradable mesh sock and container that sift out most of the solid matter before it enters the grease trap. The goal is to prevent the organic material from accumulating in grease traps, saving owners and wastewater treatment plants money, according to Johnson and Capone.

“It’s really simple,” said Johnson.

The Inland Northwest distribution team also offers other waste-treatment products, such as a bacteria-based formula that breaks down grease and an ice machine filtration device.

Several local restaurants that have the gravity-fed system installed, including Michael D’s Eatery in Coeur d’Alene and both Capone’s Pub and Grill locations (Pat Capone is the son of owners Tom and Teresa Capone), empty the filter every few days, and sometimes daily. The nylon sock can stretch to the size of a basketball with all the organic material that makes it down the pipes.

Holding up a stretched-out, soggy filter bulging from just one day of use in the Post Falls Capone’s, Johnson said, “It’s just amazing that there is that much waste that gets through the drain. If we can get our product into restaurants, the owners will be amazed.”

Over its lifetime, the filter can remove a significant amount of solid waste before it seeps into the city lines, preventing it from reaching municipal water treatment plants.

That, theoretically, could save wastewater treatment plants money, Johnson and Capone said. “For a business owner, you can clean the traps half as often. And for the city, the water that is being discharged is that much cleaner,” Capone explained. “Within six months it pays for itself.”

Until recently, area customers had to go online or call the national headquarters to order the device. Johnson and Capone hope the Rhino products catch on throughout the Inland Northwest and have made several presentations to city councils and other groups in the region to tout the devices’ effectiveness.

A large-scale experiment in Atlanta by a Rhino Environmental Solutions salesman, produced pictures showing grease-clogged pipes before installation and then much more free-flowing passages afterward.

Unblocking sewage backups and cleaning grease traps are costly to both restaurants and municipalities, with water-treatment facilities spending millions to remove solids. In Coeur d’Alene during the month of January, an estimated 7,626 pounds of suspended solid waste, the small particles of materials that defy separation by conventional methods, passed through the system every day, according to Sid Fredrickson, wastewater utility superintendent at the city’s treatment plant.

While he isn’t in a position to promote any particular product, Fredrickson said the Rhino system is a good idea.

“The concept of cleaning the waste before it makes it to the grease traps is a really, really good idea,” Fredrickson said. “That’s always a headache to business owners, and cleaning it out on our end can be, too. … Each pound of waste that makes it into the plant costs money to remove.”

For Michael DePasquale of Michael D’s Eatery, the sight of one clogged filter was proof-positive that the product works. On busier days, the amount of waste in each mesh sock is surprising, even to the owner.

“You’d be amazed at what can make it through the drain,” he said, adding that having the traps cleaned costs about $400 each time.