The Greater Tainan Government is calling on residents to turn in used cooking oil, tainted oil or recycled waste oil to trade for bars of soap made from these types of oil, adding that the process of using oil to make soap was both environmentally friendly and safe.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Friday last week that at least 235 food companies and restaurants have used the Chuan Tung brand of lard-based oil produced by Greater Kaohsiung-based Chang Guann Co that was mixed with oil skimmed from kitchen waste.
After the nation was hit last year by an adulterated oil scandal involving Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co, where the company was found to have blended edible oil products with copper chlorophyllin and cottonseed oil, the municipality’s Bureau of Environmental Protection started a soap-making program in a bid to control the environmental damage caused by residents disposing of used oil.
More than 10 tonnes of edible food oil was recycled in the program last year and turned into 7,500 bars of soap, the bureau said.
In the first half of this year, it recycled 2.28 tonnes of used oil and produced more than 2,000 bars of soap, it said.
Some of the soap has been donated to social welfare groups to help disadvantaged families, the bureau said.
The bureau said that the city government no longer has to worry about used oil being recycled and making it out onto the market.
Bureau official Chou Miao-min (周妙旻) said dumpster and recycling trucks are equipped to carry waste oil, adding that for every 600 liters of waste oils turned in for recycling, residents can receive one bar of soap.
The bureau’s Web site offers information on how to make soap from waste oil for people who want to learn how to make environmentally friendly soap in their own homes.
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