Restaurants are getting better at the parts of sustainability people can see. Packaging is changing. Food waste programs are common. Energy audits are routine. One waste stream stays quietly out of sight, down at the level of the grease interceptor beneath the kitchen sink.
That is not a criticism of restaurants. It is a description of how the system works. The grease trap does its job out of view, and for most operators the question of when it was last serviced sits low on a long list.
The good news is that the rules already exist. Calgary’s Wastewater Bylaw 14M2012 asks food service establishments to service a grease interceptor at least once every four weeks, as per the City of Calgary. Missing a service carries a $1,500 penalty. Failing to keep records for two years carries a $500 penalty. Toronto takes a similar approach and adds teeth: FOG can harden inside pipes, cause blocked sewers and basement flooding, and attract pests. The city can inspect, review records, sample wastewater, and bill a business for the cost of a blockage, with fines up to $75,000 for an individual and $100,000 for a business, according to the City of Toronto.
The framework is sound. The opportunity is in the follow-through.
Ken Craig knows this work from the inside. He founded Grease Trap Solutions, which services kitchens in Banff National Park and the Bow Valley and is expanding into Calgary. His company hauls collected FOG to the Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant’s FOG disposal station, where the City of Calgary receives it. Craig began with a shop vac and buckets. Today, the company runs vacuum trucks and takes the waste to a facility built to handle it while recording and tracking the total liters of wastewater hauled and the number of traps serviced via its mobile web app.
His observation is not that restaurants are careless. It is that the responsibility often lands on the wrong person.
“My main local competition is really the dishwasher or the maintenance man,” Craig says. In some kitchens, whoever is available gets handed the shop vac and the task. The work gets done. The question is whether it gets done in a way that removes what has settled to the bottom, not just what floats on top.
Craig has a name for that settled layer. He calls it a “sinker.” “It can develop a milkshake-like consistency,” he says. The surface can look acceptable while the trap is half full of solids. A professional service removes the whole load, not just the visible portion of it.
He also points to the safety side. Craig says he has used gas monitors during servicing and regularly encounters black mold inside traps, highlighting the importance of proper personal protective equipment (PPE) and specialized training that a kitchen crew does not typically have.
The encouraging part is that the data already shows what proper oversight can do. The Capital Regional District in British Columbia regulates more than 2,000 businesses through permits and codes of practice. In 2024, it recorded eight significant incidents. Six involved FOG build-up reported by district or municipal staff. The same year, its inspectors visited 844 food service businesses and carried out 476 follow-up inspections. Many focused on interceptor maintenance and safe access for servicing, according to the Capital Regional District. That is a program actively looking, not waiting for a backup to surface.
Craig’s suggestion is simple and practical: Require licensed haulers and ask for the service record. “Having rules in place is one thing, but there needs to be a way to check that businesses are following them,” he says.
That is a modest ask. A restaurant already shows a health inspector its temperature logs. Showing a local wastewater authority when the interceptor was last serviced, what was removed, and where it went is the same idea applied to a different waste stream. Digital records make them easy to produce and easy to review. Grease Trap Solutions provides them. The value comes when an authority asks for one.
The payoff for municipalities is straightforward. FOG that slips past an interceptor builds up in sewer lines, narrows flow, and contributes to blockages and overflows. Treatment plants are not built to process it at scale. A backup costs the utility and the taxpayer, not only the restaurant that skipped a service. A simple record requirement shifts the incentive toward doing the work on schedule.
The tools are ready. The standards are written. The disposal infrastructure at Bonnybrook is in place. What remains is the routine habit of enforcing regulations, and that is well within reach. Ultimately, both the responsibility and the fallout of proper servicing fall to the municipalities.
So when a restaurant says its grease trap is handled, what record makes that easy to confirm?
