Biofuel Thieves Steal Restaurant Grease 165
TMB writes "In a move that The Simpson's foretold, thieves have begun stealing inedible kitchen grease for use in biofuels. From the article: 'It's known as inedible kitchen grease, or IKG, which was once deemed waste and used in animal feed, though now is "an elixir in the booming green economy," according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. "The grease’s value as a biofuel is being increasingly recognized," the agency said last month. "IKG is now coveted, which makes it a target for theft.."
Why does my car smell like french fries... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:If it's IKG and therefore no use to the restaur (Score:4, Interesting)
FTFS: it's not the restaurants that are reporting this, it's a Government Agency. If they were so hot on biodiesel as an alternative to drill diesel they'd be making it illegal to make your own and making nightly runs between restaurants and large privately owned refineries (with such original names as "Shell", "Halliburton", "BP", Texaco"...) and selling the stuff at the same price as regular. The problem for them is it's insanely easy (and relatively inexpensive) to make your own diesel, it'd be as difficult to regulate as alcohol (see: prohibition) and would likely as not spawn an underworld of diesel bootleggers armed with Thompsonsmaybe.
Re:Why does my car smell like french fries... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's incredibly easy to convert an old VW diesel to run on kitchen grease. The trickiest part is keeping the viscosity down so you can pump it to the engine, but there's plenty of kits out there with in tank heaters for colder regions.
Mechanic on my two previous cars was running a Mercedes diesel on bio fuel. He had some setup outside his house, which processed cooking oil into fuel. Initially he had no trouble finding local restaurants who were happy to give away their used oil (rather than pay for disposal.) Not so available anymore, people are willing to pay for it now.
In other news [chicagotribune.com], there's a flight recently by a jet powered by biofuel - mostly for promotional reasons as the jet requirement came in at about g/$17 as opposed to g/$3 for petrol jet fuel.
New trend... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/us/30grease.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2008/0506/p01s03-usgn.html [csmonitor.com]
http://blog.oregonlive.com/nwheadlines/2008/05/restaurant_kitchen_grease_thef.html [oregonlive.com]
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/articles/2884/california-cop-is-arrested-for-grease-theft/ [biodieselmagazine.com]
And last year
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-09-29-restaurant-grease-thieves_N.htm [usatoday.com]
But apparently has been around much longer, maybe even before the Simpsons episode (1998)
http://www.salon.com/2000/11/06/grease_wars/ [salon.com]
Biofuel Thieves? (Score:5, Interesting)