Grease be gone! The Grease Hog Mat is a solution for kitchen oil spills

Grease and oil are kitchen essentials, whether it’s for serving up the perfect stir fry or making sure brownies don’t stick to baking trays. Grease spills can lead to injury or linger on stove tops, providing fodder for roaches and ants (as this blogger found out the hard way). Cooking materials seem harmless, but when spilled or misused, they can trigger unfortunate mishaps.

Cooking fires
Cooking fires can happen anywhere. These types of fires are caused by stoves, ovens, deep fat fryers, open grills, and other mishaps with cooking vessels and heating appliances. From 2008-2010, cooking was the leading cause of all fires in residential building in the U.S. and accounted for 45% of all residential building fires that fire departments responded to. Oil, fat, and grease were the most commonly ignited materials (51%) in these cooking fires. This is likely because oil and grease are highly flammable ingredients and can splatter or spill during the cooking process.

Slips, trips and falls in restaurants

Slips, trips, and falls are one of the most prevalent hazards in the café and restaurant industry, causing injury to more than three million food service employees and over one million guests annually. The restaurant industry spends $2 billion in expenses for those injuries, and slips and falls are the greatest source of general liability insurance claims in the industry. The greatest cause behind these injuries? Floors with oil or water spills. A few seconds of carelessness or oversight often leads to fractures, sprains, cuts, or worse.

Floor safety solutions
So how do we clean up these slippery situations? - First and foremost, make sure floor safety systems have high traction and slip resistance. For example, try out non-slip tiles and make sure that a regular cleaning procedure has been implemented to keep floors clean of spilled water, oil, and fat.
- Consider implementing fat collection systems in cooking areas, such as sinks and troughs designed to catch water dripping onto the floor.
- For oil, people can turn to mechanical aids such as oil transport systems, or drizzle tops to oil bottles that keep them from leaking throughout the slides.
It’s best to invest in floor safety systems designed especially for grease and oil spills. Mats with drainage surface areas allow for easy cleaning on the floor. For a mat created specifically to trap and conceal grease and oil, try the Grease Hog Mat. Its fabric is solution-dyed polypropylene, which ensures that it will not fade or rot, and its nitrile rubber backing is grease-proof.

The distinguishing factors of the Grease Hog mat are that its low-pile surface (i.e. flatter) allows grease and oil to be washed off easily and dried quickly. The mat’s bi-level pattern operates as a strong anti-slip surface, with a disk backing for even more anti-slip resistance. Grease is a great movie, but dangerous on kitchen floors. In cooking areas, reducing grease spills must be made a high priority for the sake of safety and hygiene.