Grease Pickup Built for Campus Dining Operations

University dining halls are classified as food service establishments and must comply with all California grease disposal regulations. The CDFA Inedible Kitchen Grease program cdfa.ca.gov/ahfss/MPES/Rendering/ requires licensed transporters and compliant manifests per CCR Title 3 Section 1180 for every pickup, regardless of whether the facility is privately or publicly operated. California Health and Safety Code Section 114201 leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=HSC&sectionNum=114201 requires functioning grease traps and interceptors in every campus kitchen. LA County FOG cleanla.lacounty.gov/fog/ and OC San FOG permits ocsan.gov/ocsan-permits/businessfog/ apply to campus facilities within their respective jurisdictions. UC and Cal State properties are not exempt from county FOG programs. Violations start at $1,000 per offense per facility.

Because our service is free — no fees and all equipment provided at no charge — it often falls below the dollar thresholds that trigger competitive bidding requirements at UC, Cal State, and community college campuses. The specific threshold varies by institution, but many campus procurement offices can onboard a zero-cost vendor through a simplified purchasing process rather than a full RFP cycle. For campuses that prefer or require formal procurement, we provide complete proposal packages with CDFA licensing, insurance certificates, sustainability credentials, campus references, and service-level documentation that procurement officers can evaluate through standard competitive review processes.

We integrate your full academic calendar — including fall start, winter break, spring break, summer sessions, finals weeks, commencement, and move-in weekends — into our scheduling system. Pickup frequency automatically scales to match enrollment-driven dining volume. During winter break when dining halls run at 20 percent capacity, we reduce to biweekly or monthly service. When fall semester starts and 30,000 students arrive on campus, we increase to multiple pickups per week at high-volume facilities. Schedule adjustments are automatic and there is no charge for increasing or decreasing frequency throughout the year.

Our dashboard provides total gallons of used cooking oil diverted from landfill, equivalent CO2 emissions offset through biodiesel conversion, and per-facility diversion metrics broken down by semester and fiscal year. Data exports are formatted to be compatible with AASHE STARS sustainability tracking, Second Nature reporting frameworks, and the campus-specific annual sustainability reports that UC and Cal State schools publish. Your campus sustainability office can pull this data directly from the dashboard without requesting it from our team. We also provide a narrative-ready summary of your campus oil diversion program that can be included in sustainability publications and board presentations.

Yes. During onboarding, we map every dining facility on your campus — main dining halls, satellite cafeterias, student union food courts, catering prep kitchens, faculty dining rooms, athletic concession stands, and any other food production points. Each facility receives a container sized for its individual output, and pickup schedules are tailored per building based on actual production volume and meal plan enrollment data. Your dining services administration sees all facilities on one consolidated dashboard with the ability to drill into per-facility volume, compliance status, and diversion metrics.

Student food courts typically house six to fifteen vendor concepts — burger stations, Asian cuisine, pizza, Mexican food, salad bars with fryers — all sharing common kitchen infrastructure. We install shared containers sized for the combined output of all vendors and set pickup frequency based on total food court production. For food courts where individual vendors are operated by different companies or campus dining subcontractors, we provide per-vendor volume estimates and documentation that allows your dining services team to allocate grease management responsibility fairly across operators.