While many stores pull out all the stops to lure customers on Black Friday, professionals in another line of business will be very busy dealing with stoppages.
 
Plumbing companies often say that the day following Thanksgiving is among the busiest of the year for them, thanks to the volume of holiday cooking and the propensity of home cooks to overload their sink drains and garbage disposals.
 
“I had a lady to call me one day after Thanksgiving. She had put five pounds of shrimp heads and peels into her garbage disposal,” Cheryl Mintz, owner of J.S. Mintz Plumbing Service in Wilmington, said this week. “You can imagine what that smelled like.”
 
While Mintz said she couldn’t be sure that the Friday following Thanksgiving is her company’s busiest day, she added that there is always a high volume of calls. People forget that garbage disposals aren’t equipped to handle fibrous items like shrimp casings, potato peelings, collard stems and onion skins, she said.
 
Mintz, who said her plumber father refused to install a garbage disposal in their house because he had to fix customers’ devices so frequently, cautioned against putting too much of anything down a disposal.
 
Officials with Benjamin Franklin Plumbing said in a news release that in 2013 and 2014 calls for service more than doubled the day after Thanksgiving. 
 
Ahead of the holiday feasts, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority this year mounted a “Cease the Grease” campaign to urge area residents to keep from pouring oils and fats down the drain. To encourage people to place residual cooking oil in discarded cans, CFPUA has distributed thousands of can lids so greasy liquids can be stored without spills before being put in the trash.
 
Holiday meal cleanup can be the tipping point if home cooks have put oils and fats down their drains or disposals in the past, CFPUA spokesman Mike McGill said.
 
“It adds up over time,” he said of greasy residue. “I grew up thinking that if you poured bacon grease down the drain and ran hot water, it would wash the grease down. But that doesn’t work. The fat cools, and it hardens.”
 
The proper way to dispose of grease, according to a news release from McGill, is to let the grease cool in the cooking vessel and then pour it into its original container or into an empty can. Cooks who are deep-frying their turkey in a large amount of oil should take the oil to the county landfill or its hazardous waste facility.
 
“Yes, it’s a short drive, but it’s a great thing for you to do for our sewer system,” he said in the release.