Don't dump that turkey grease down the drain or just stick a jar of used cooking oil in your garbage this holiday season.

By getting rid of grease a different way, city officials say, you can help prevent clogged pipes, sewage backups and even reduce the number of sewage spills.

City officials this week are handing out 5,000 oil-change boxes — the kind people usually use to drain used motor oil — to people buying turkeys or at least two gallons of cooking oil at various Foodland, Safeway, Star and Times supermarkets.

City officials want you to pour the fat, oil and grease into these boxes or shredded newspaper or something else that will absorb the cooking castoffs. Keeping the fat out of the drains keeps pipes from being blocked by grease clogs.

During the holiday season, city engineer James Baginski and others reach out to residents who may be gearing up for heavy cooking and may dump grease down the sink. Although they try to get the word out every year, this is the first time they will give out about $10,000 worth of the boxes.

Baginski, head of the regulatory control branch for the city Department of Environmental Services, said an aggressive program of spill prevention for restaurants and other grease-producing businesses since 2000 has helped cut the number of grease-related sewage spills in half over the last several years, from more than 100 a year to less than that for the last three years.

He said officials added cooking oil to the mix after the recent gain in popularity of the deep fried turkey. "There's a lot of waste cooking oil out there," he said.

And even though vegetable oil won't clog pipes by itself, that changes when it mixes with animal fat. "Put it in cooler water in the sewer — boom — it hardens," Baginski said.

Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.