We all know pouring kitchen grease down the sink can clog up our sewer lines, but many people do it anyway.

Now, Houston is planning to change things.  So you decide. Is it a good idea, or are we just pouring money down the drain?

Whenever a city of Houston sewer crew pops a manhole cover, odds are even that grease is responsible for this.

“It looks heavier than what it is, but it’s a solid block of grease,” Ray Tovar from the Houston Public Works said.

For 22 years, Ray Tovar has pumped fat out from under our city streets.

“We deal with this every year, every year, never fails,” Tovar said.

Every day, these vacuum trucks suck thousands of gallons of hardened cooking grease out of city sewers. Otherwise the sewers would clog up.

“A lot of money, a lot of money. Five to six million dollars a year is spent actually removing grease from the sewer lines,” Alvin Wright from the Houston Public Works said.

So to stop the problem at the source, the City of Houston wants to buy 15,000 foil bags. They are boxes, with two foil-lined fat-trapper bags inside. These would be used in your kitchen, instead of pouring the fat down the drain. The problem is, before this happens, the City Council has to approve it.

“Buying fat trapper bags when anyone could use an old tomato can or a piece of alumninum foil is to me a silly use of taxpayer dollars,” Anne Clutterbuck from the Houston City Council said.

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It would cost $63,000 to hand the bags to only 15,000 people in a city of 2.1 million.

Some question whether this would really make a difference.

“So what we’re trying to do is create a new style of thinking in kitchens,” Wright said.

Next week city leaders will decide if a few foil bags can help solve this messy problem.