by Cecile Cinco

I termed it dark simply because it has turned dark after frying fish or chicken or whatever that is you fried and you can no longer use the oil for food.

Oftentimes it will just go to utter waste. Imagine how many liters of oil that was you fried how many kgs of fish in...

So what can we do about it to make it useful still?

Make your light shine...save those candles, use used oil.


How?

First, filter the oil at least twice, to make it "cleaner".

Get a clean bottle. (I used a liquor bottle with its cap intact.)

Punch 4 small holes with a nail on top of the cap. Those will be breathing holes.

Punch a bigger hole in the middle for your wick.

Cut a bias (diagonally) of cotton (old cotton cloth/shirt) long enough for the end to reach the bottom (even if it's longer) and wide enough (about 2 inches).

Insert the "wick" through the bottle cap and leave just an inch out the cap.

Pour the filtered oil in the bottle.

Close the cap to wet the cloth wick with oil. Oil up to the tip of the wick.

Make it flame (by lighting it, of course!)

Try it.

I'm a recycle fanatic.

About 25 years ago my  mom bought Energrill. It's a 5-part 3-layered tin stove where you use crumpled newspaper for fuel. I can say it's good in place of LPG if you have lots of old paper to crumple.

I found a better way, though. It's better to start when the sun is more frequent to show than rain to fall.

Procedure:

1. Get a container that can hold all your scrap paper (newspaper, phone directory, notebook, bond paper, manila paper, cartons, etc.).

2. Tear them to as small as 1/8 the size of a bond paper. Do not cut. Just tear with your hands.

3. Put them in your container.

4. Fill the container (that's already filled with paper) with water.

5. Let steep for an hour at least.

6. When the paper had softened, it's ready.

7. Get some enough to be the size half your fist when you squeeze out the water and your paper crumpled to a "ball" just like the normal charcoal size.

8. Set to dry under the sun (atop your roof would be better).

9. When it's fully dry (about 2 days of sun-drying), it's ready to be used as charcoal.

Quality is less than real charcoal but better than mere crumpled paper.

Try it...and save some trees.