[Stoves] Thieves swipe used cooking oil to brew biodiesel

[nari phaltan]

Another case of American ingenuity!

Cheers. Anil


Thieves swipe used cooking oil to brew biodiesel
Associated Press, May 20, 2008

"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A few years ago, drums of used french fry grease
were only of interest to a small network of underground biofuel brewers,
who would use the slimy oil to power their souped-up antique Mercedes.

Now, restaurants from Berkeley, Calif. to Sedgwick, Kan. are reporting
thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars by rustlers who are
refining it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills.

As the price of diesel shoots up, so, too, does the value of grease.

"Restaurants and staff are no longer looking at this material as trash,
they're looking at is as something that's about to go into city
vehicles," said Karri Ving, who runs San Francisco's new waste cooking
oil collection program. "Unless you lock down every trash can, thefts
are going to happen."

Drivers for Blue Sky Bio-Fuels, a grease hauler that also manufactures
biodiesel for San Francisco's municipal program, often find the
300-gallon dumpster they store outside the Oakland Coliseum nearly dry,
despite the dozens of concessions stands that regularly dump their oil
there. Losses at that one site alone have cost the company $3,700 in
foregone oil revenues in the last year, said Wesley Caddell, the Oakland
firm's business developer.

Company officials say oil rustlers typically siphon their supplies into
drums of their own, which they take to backyard gins to be brewed for
personal use.

To manufacture the renewable fuel legally, biodiesel producers must
register with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Biodiesel
consumers must also pay the government taxes to help with road upkeep.

So far, members of the National Biodiesel Board haven't reported
feedstock thefts, but that doesn't mean they aren't happening on a small
scale, said Amber Thurlo Pearson, a spokeswoman for the industry's
national trade association."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hKuuSmF1ii6m7-b3cW0u5Zr3sZYQD90PK7600



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