They make aluminum dishes like that specially shaped to go around the burners/electrical elements for stoves, their purpose is to catch dirt, grease, etc, to speed up cleaning. My great grandmother used them, so they aren't a new thing at all, though I am not a fan of using them for general use, they might be cheap but it adds up and as a cheap ass who escaped poverty once, I am far too paranoid of spending money on luxuries to use them as a regular thing.
I personally only buy them for Thanksgiving, then I spend the day cooking and to speed up clean up I toss them out, then put the year round non-disposable ones back in. I repeat the process around Christmas. It is a great way to make the clean up of holidays faster, I strongly recommend them if you have to spend the day cooking for a large number of people rotating various things on and off the stove resulting in a messy stove top, as it reduces the work needed. They also make some that are designed to fit in the bottom of the oven dodging around the various methods of heat generation there as well to catch grease, also good for such times of year. However just doing it the good ol' fashion way and actually cleaning the stove and oven regularly the rest of the year is plenty. If you aren't a lazy fuck you can also do so on holidays, but frankly, post holiday cleanup has me willing to take short cuts, I cooked all day and have the rest of my home to tidy up.
If you are cooking to feed a commune (which they aren't, we've seen their diet) they make sense to reduce the work needed to clean, but as you said, we know they aren't cleaning.