According to the data collection work carried out by the environmental association Zero, the best collection rates for used cooking oils of domestic origin are from the municipalities of Maia (0.29 liters per inhabitant/year), Seixal (0.22) and Oeiras (0.21), followed by Matosinhos (0.19) and Amadora (0.18).

However, there are many municipalities that collect only 0.01 or 0.02 liters per inhabitant/year.

"The first conclusion we can draw is that we have a country at different speeds, because we have municipalities that collect almost a third of a liter of domestic cooking oils per inhabitant/year (0.29 liters/year) and others that collect 0.01 or 0.02 liters/year, that is, almost 30 times less", Rui Berkemeier, from the Zero Association, told the Lusa agency.

Still according to Rui Berkemeier, "there are municipalities that already have well-established and consolidated collection networks, and that already have interesting collection data, and there are others that are practically at the beginning".

"We have here a very wide range within these large municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants", he added.

Rui Berkemeier said that Zero decided to carry out this survey with the 308 municipalities in the country, but most of them did not respond, and that only after some insistence was it possible to obtain data from all municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, with the exception of Loures, one of the municipalities that never provided the requested data.

"It is important to understand what is happening in people's homes and in the collections that municipalities have to make in relation to oil of domestic origin", justified Rui Berkemeier, adding that Zero intends to repeat the initiative to obtain data for 2023. 

"There has been no official information available on the management, mainly of oils that originate in Portuguese homes", lamented the official, recalling that used cooking oils "are waste that causes problems, both in the treatment of wastewater and in the sewage network itself".

According to the study, the national investment in the collection of used cooking oils has been through the so-called "oleões", but the municipality of Braga has invested, mainly, in a door-to-door collection, on demand, a solution that the association admits is one of the possible options to meet national recycling targets.

The door-to-door collection, according to Rui Berkemeier, not only avoids the theft of the "oleões" installed on the public road, but also "avoids the contamination of used oils due to acts of vandalism, often related to theft, and may be an interesting solution to increase the quantities of used cooking oils collected by municipalities".

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