Greased up: cooking oil can’t go down the drain – so how do you dispose of it?

Pouring cooking oil down the drain is ‘good for plumbers, not good for you’, plumber Lars Olsson says. Photograph: Renphoto/Getty Images

So you shallow-fried some fish for dinner and now the washing up awaits. But first you’re forced to solve a great kitchen riddle: what am I meant to do with all of this leftover oil?

To pour it in the bin – where it’s bound to leak and cause a mess – seems wrong. You might be able to reuse it but that’s not always an option. So can you, err, just tip it down the sink?