The city's grease patrol hits the streets and supermarkets again this week.

The Department of Environmental Services will be back at various Times and Foodland supermarkets across O'ahu, handing out cooking oil/grease-disposal boxes.

The reason: If you don't pour the grease from that ham, roast or turkey down your sink, you can help avoid clogging your pipes, help the city stop sewage backups and help the environment by preventing sewage spills.

During the holiday season, city engineer James Baginski and others reach out to residents who are planning heavy holiday cooking and who may dump grease down drains. This is the first year they are giving out up to $10,000 worth of the boxes as part of the war against FOG: or fats, oils and grease.

Baginski and the others were out before Thanksgiving weekend meeting with people and handing out the boxes. "We're still trying to get that message across; we still have plenty," he said.

This time, the box giveaway will be later in the day, to try to reach residents shopping after work.

Since 2000, an aggressive city program of working with restaurants and other grease-producing businesses has helped cut the number of grease-related sewage spills in half, Baginski said. At one time, there were more than 100 a year, he said.

Baginski, who is with the Department of Environmental Services, said you can easily make your own grease-absorbing container using some newspaper and a can or a paper carton that once held milk or fruit juice.

All you have to do is tear the newspaper into strips and stuff it into the carton. Then pour the grease or oil out of your pan and into the carton, adding enough paper to soak up the grease.

You can test your container by tipping it to see if any leaks out. If it leaks, add more paper. Whatever container you use to suck up the grease, Baginski says, throw it in the trash, because the absorbed grease makes for good fuel at the city's garbage-to-energy plant.

He said the old practice of freezing the grease in a jar stops working once the sun turns it back to liquid and the compactor in the garbage truck breaks the container, sending the grease through the rest of the rubbish or running down your street.

Baginski said he didn't think that people still thought putting liquid or chilled grease in the rubbish was OK. "It was kind of surprising that people still think that," he said.

And even though vegetable oil won't clog pipes by itself, that changes when it mixes with animal fat. Then it solidifies when it cools, which can cause grease buildup in the pipes that eventually blocks them.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.