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.."
Simpsons did it (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, two jokes in one!
Re:Simpsons did it (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, two jokes in one!
In Capitalist Eurozone Greece steals from EU!
Well, only if they default...
Re:Simpsons did it (Score:4, Funny)
My retirement grease!
Re:Simpsons did it (Score:4, Funny)
can I put my kitchen grease in my old oil drum? (Score:2)
Re:can I put my kitchen grease in my old oil drum? (Score:4, Insightful)
most grease needs to be filtered before it can be used (or it'll clog your pipes, and then you won't be happy). IIRC there are instructions on what you need to do to turn used vegetable oil into biofuel for your car [journeytoforever.org].
You could definitely dump your grease in there until it gets full, what you'd do with it after that is another question to ask though :)
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maybe, but they'd obviously just steal it...
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Seeing that cooking grease is made of hydrocarbons, and life on earth uses hydrocarbons extensively in its makeup, there's a good chance that grease left sitting in a drum for decades would become something's dinner before you build up enough of it to sell it for even a few dollars.
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I think he means bacteria, mold, or insects.
Why does my car smell like french fries... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Greasecar.com has kits for tons of vehicles.
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Turbo cylinder? O_o
Not just for fuel in California (Score:3)
Disturbing story on the BBC [bbc.co.uk], a while back, regarding recovered grease from disposal, grease traps, drains, etc. being recycled into packaged cooking oil in China. Yum.
Where's there's opportunity, all that's needed is people with the required ethics.
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Just one more reason to never eat anything labeled "Made in China" or "Made in PRC".
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So basically never buy about 95% of stuff :p
Re:Not just for fuel in California (Score:5, Informative)
Most of our manufactured crap comes from there, but (aside from apple juice) our food supply is not completely overrun yet. Trader Joe's completely avoids Chinese suppliers.
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aside from apple juice
I have no troubles finding a "Made in USA" apple juice in my local Safeway so far - e.g. this [amazon.com]. Am I missing something?
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aside from apple juice
I have no troubles finding a "Made in USA" apple juice in my local Safeway so far - e.g. this [amazon.com]. Am I missing something?
The little label that says 'Concentrate from China' perhaps? At least that's what the one in my fridge says on the neck.
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The little label that says 'Concentrate from China' perhaps?
That thing actually has "not from concentrate" on the label, and "US/Canada" on the neck where countries of manufacture are meant to be listed.
Anyway, I googled on the subject, and, apparently, the problem is mainly with apple concentrate - 90% of that in U.S. comes from China.
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> Trader Joe's completely avoids Chinese suppliers.
That may be true, but Trader Joe's also has close links with Aldi - a discount supermarket chain in Europe. While they are generally quite reasonable for a discounter, they certainly have their fair share of questionable practices and creative labelling.
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They don't have "close links with Aldi" on a corporate level, but the guys that run the two chains are brothers IIRC.
Re:Not just for fuel in California (Score:5, Funny)
. . .so you can't trust any juice anymore...
Isn't that what Hitler said?
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>>So basically never buy about 95% of stuff :p
Assuming you're not eating your toys, we here in America still actually grow a fair chunk of what we eat.
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95% of your food comes from China?
Could be worse (Score:5, Informative)
Well, at least it's not likely to get mixed with sewage to make lard for human consumption like in China [nytimes.com].
One hopes so, at least.
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I can support this punishment.
If it's IKG and therefore no use to the restaurant (Score:2)
...Then how come the removal is classified as theft? The restaurant shows no loss (in fact it's a net gain for them as they would otherwise have to pay for disposal, per EA regulations), and the "thieves" are merely showing initiative per yet more EA regulations on RECYCLING.
Here's my theory: certain people are pissed because they're not getting their cut (the Government for fuel tax revenue, the oil companies for diesel sales (boo bloody hoo, they're getting pissy because out of their TRILLION DOLLAR INDUS
Re:If it's IKG and therefore no use to the restaur (Score:4, Insightful)
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OWS in a nutshell.
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madness. He should *charge* the restaurant a small amount to take it away for recycling.
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madness. He should *charge* the restaurant a small amount to take it away for recycling.
That doesn't work when there's someone in the area who is willing to pay for it. This isn't hypothetical, people do pay for it.
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It could work.
There's a sweet spot somewhere, where the costs work out such that the market value of the good is so low that you still would pay someone to take it away.
Let's say it costs me $10 to collect a tonne of grease, $10 to process it into biofuel, which I can sell for £20. I've not made a profit. If I also charge $10 for collecting the grease, I've made $10 profit.
My competitor in the grease disposal business, who doesn't sell biofuel, has to charge $20 collection, to make the same profit. (a
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or - find out what the local council charges for industrial waste collection, then offer to subcontract directly to them for slightly less, and include the recycling feature "for free".
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Nope, you still have it. Besides, I didn't take it, some nice person shared it with me.
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In most places it's not. I can legally go riffle through your garbage once you put it out for collection. Private business on the other hand you might not be able too. I'm not sure exactly what makes it legal for someone to riffle through my garbage, but not theirs (if that is the case).
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Wrong. I think you are confusing two things. Once you put your garbage out for collection it is no longer considered private, so someone can indeed look through it. However, it is still either yours or the collection companies property, and taking it without permission is theft.
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No, I'm not wrong. In several places (most) it's considered abandoned property once it's set outside for the trash collectors to pick it up.
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AFAIK, in the UK for example it is *not* abandoned legally if you've specifically put it out to be collected (and especially IMHO if it's still on my land). It might be abandoned in law if you fly-tipped it.
And if not abandoned, taking it without permission is theft.
IANAL
Rgds
Damon
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We'll let the Star Chamber figure that one out.
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Heh, next thing you know the cops are going to crack down on bums for dumpster diving.
And to all those who have responded to your post with "what if the restaurants sell this stuff?" - they're wrong. The restaurants, like you said, pay to have it removed.
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It's just one anecdote vs. another, but this reply says his friend DOES pay the restaurants for the stuff:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2517652&cid=38006318 [slashdot.org]
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I don't know how the law would apply here (IANAL) but if you put out trash for collection, you give up rights to it. Could be the same for grease put out for collection or it might be different.
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The grease isn't put out, it's in a container owned by the rendering company leased to the restaurant on the restaurant's premises.
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Once the grease is put in the render's container, it's their property and they will defend it; the restaurant that generated the waste grease probably doesn't care. It's the grease rendering company that being stolen from, not the restaurant.
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.
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If the government didn't depend so much on fuel taxes, they wouldn't care so much about bootlegging.
A mileage-based tax based on the weight of the vehicle would also solve the problem that a 2-ton car causes 16 times [pavementinteractive.org] as much road wear per mile as a 1-ton car, but only pays about twice as much in fuel taxes.
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A mileage-based tax
I'm pretty sure I could disconnect my odometer.
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The current plans in some places is to use a GPS logger.
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So I make my engine spark plugs just a weee bit loose to make a nice interfering spark gap emitter.
Or just make the entire car a faraday cage.
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They'd be very interested in knowing why your GPS log nothing (as opposed to logging the same position, as it would happen if the car was parked). My bet is that you'd pay a hefty fine if they inspected your car and discovered that.
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If people can chip an XBox for a hundred bucks, I'm pretty sure any monitoring device will have a whole cottage industry spring up around it. Giving people financial advantages like this is asking for trouble.
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Three points:
1. A cottage industry of odometer tamperers would spring up - they could just set the odo to whatever you want for a nice discount. If they can mod an XBox, they can probably work something out for the "tamper-proof" odometers.
2. You can change the gear ratio at the transmission such that the speedo still works, but gives you significantly fewer miles - if you use a ratio that is about 2/3 you can save 1/3 on taxes and the speedometer is still usable because you can use the kilometer markings a
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Rolling them back is difficult, since they are tamper-resistant. But disconnecting them from the little plastic gear in the transmission is easy - or at least it was easy the last time I had to change out the gear when my tire size changed.
That's the thing - even just increasing your tire size without changing out the gear would cheat the system. Conversely, you could put the wrong size gear in there purposely to give yourself a discount on taxes. Yeah, your speedo would be inaccurate by xx%, but cruise con
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Yeah, your speedo would be inaccurate by xx%, but cruise control would still work and you could easily figure out where the new 60MPH was by timing mile markers.
Those radar displays they put by the road sometimes would be a great help for this. It's how I realized that my speedometer was reading high by several mph at ~50. No tire size changes; as I understand it they err on the side of overstating your speed.
Re:If it's IKG and therefore no use to the restaur (Score:4, Informative)
FTFS: it's not the restaurants that are reporting this, it's a Government Agency
Yes the issue of a broad theft problem is being reported by a GA, and the GA is talking about taking action, but the GA wouldn't know about the problem unless it was reported by the independent restaurants first.
The implication that the restaurants don't care, only the government and its oil lobbyists care, is completely unfounded.
Oh, and also wrong according to TFA:
NPR blogger Nancy Shute reports on how restaurants and recyclers are now putting barrels of so-called yellow grease under lock and key because, as the National Renderers Association told her, it has become "the new copper."
I guess you were under the impression that only the government and the thieves, not the restaurants, knew that IKG could be valuable?
This is old news (Score:5, Informative)
Back when I was making my own fuel out of WVO (thats Waste Vegetable Oil, IKG is a new term to me), stores would GIVE US their grease for free. They were paying Rendering farms to haul it off for them. To be turned into dog food usually.
Then biofuel got big, and the renderers started to actually pay a small amount for the oil that they use to get paid to take.
Then, in CA, they got a law passed that said if you haul used veggie oil, you have to have a business license and insurance. It was a scare tactic to get the small time home brewer out of the loop, so that the renderers wouldnt have to compete with home brewers. They even got it classified as a hazardous product!
By the way, the process of turning grease into biofuel is the same as turning it into soap (aka Fight Club), its just a different ratio of the same chemicals. Some Methanol, and some Caustic lye or caustic soda, depending on what your source oil is. Shake and serve!
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More precisely, each is a byproduct of the process for making the other, so you get some of both no matter what.
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Not always, the The two-stage biodiesel process [journeytoforever.org] completely avoids soap.
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Nice FUD, but I notice you didn't say WHAT was wrong with it, which is WHY you are FUDding. Unless you want to be branded as a troll, maybe you ought to kick some knowledge instead of decrying the actions of someone who's doing a lot more than you are to make the world a better place.
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One of the side effects is that biodiesel seems to be getting into the livestock feed fats pipeline (shared processing facilities, I'd guess; dog food that uses animal fat now smells like diesel fuel) and the result is toxic to canine fetuses and neonates.
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"Then, in CA, ......... They even got it classified as a hazardous product!"
In California?! Say it isn't so.
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I know one of these (Score:2)
I know a guy who has a VW TDI converted into a grease engine. He's banned from every Wal-Mart in America because he worked out some arrangement with the McDonald's manager (inside the Wal-Mart) to get enough old vegetable oil to keep his car on the road. Some security guard at Wal-Mart saw him taking the oil out of the waste container in the back and disapproved. I think the McDonald's manager got in trouble for it as well.
Now I think he gets his fuel from Rallys or Wendy's or some place like that. But he d
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How is that worse than smelling like diesel?
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How is that worse than smelling like diesel?
Diesel fries . . . yum.
They would be caught by insanely cackling "We're green."
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When you go on a car club cruise, the people behind you complain that you made them hungry.
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Yeah, it can gum up your injection system and (potentially) destroy your engine.
Biodiesel, on the other hand, is a lot safer, and the only "conversion" you need to do is replace your rubber fuel-return hoses with Viton (which costs about $10 and takes 5 minutes).
(I drive a TDI too, and run commercially-made biodiesel in it.)
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FWIW, Volkswagen claims in the user manual for my diesel car (Jetta SportWagen TDI) that only fuel blends of up to 5% biodiesel are safe to run. Is that BS, or is there something about it?
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2006 and older TDIs (Pumpe Düße and rotary-pump injection) are fine on any blend up to 100% biodiesel. The new 2009+ "clean diesel" common-rail injection TDIs "officially" have a problem running more than 5% because of the fancy exhaust system.
The new cars contain a device called a "Diesel Particulate Filter," where the soot from combustion accumulates and is periodically burned off by a "DPF regeneration event" in which the fuel injection timing is modified to increase exhaust temperature. Becaus
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VW warranty notwithstanding, the general consensus at www.tdiclub.com is that B100 is fine for PDs (but not common-rails, due to the emissions equipment).
The 2.0L VW CR TDIs don't use urea at all. (The bigger CR engines in Touaregs and whatnot are different, and do use urea.)
All reverse in Argentina (Score:4, Insightful)
People have varying views of rubbish disposal.
In Argentina before they had the crash that the west is about to have rubbish was viewed this way.
But after the 2002 financial crash so many people were destitute that an army of people was born and found searching the dustbins primarily for cardboard.
Now the crash is past this group of people seemingly come out of nowhere at night and clean up the streets. Now people just through rubbish out wherever and there is hardly any governement provided collection. Compare this with western Europe where everything is a cost and a problem to dispose of, so much that people dump it anywhere.
I always suggest working with the market rather than fighting against it. If there is a problem then attempt to steer the market flow rather than trying to make water go uphill.
In this example people who wish to securely transfer ownership to a disposal company should state thier intentions and those collecting otherwise protected by default.
This is the kind of lesson that this economic disaster will tell whether we like it or not.
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On a related note: National Geographic did a show about Rio residents (I think it was Rio, ICBW) who live and work on the municipal dump which is easily the size of the city itself and right next door. They survive by recycling practically everything from rags to plastics to food (growing their own on composting heaps), many do well enough to provide for their families.
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I think you might have found a solution for Detroit.
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My question would be what happens to the rubish AFTER these people have removed it from the streets have removed anything they can recycle? Does it end up in the air as fumes from a crude incinerator or precious metal extraction furnace? does it end up buried in crude landfill with no protection against leaching? does it end up just dumped in the countryside somwhere?
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]
I work in a restaurant (Score:2)
That's right, folks: grease is fuel! (Score:2)
I guess that when people are stealing the stuff, that makes it officially valuable. To borrow an old meme: will 2011 be the year of biofuels in the fuel tank?
Biofuel Thieves? (Score:5, Interesting)
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re: your last point.
No, solar isn't illegal yet, but what it is, is prohibitively expensive. At current prices for panels against wholesale per-kWH line energy prices, a grid-feeding solar setup (3-5kW) runs around the £8k-£14k [solarguide.co.uk] mark depending on the size of the installation, and you can only get it if you own your home - renters need not apply. At that rate it would take anything up to 25 years to pay for itself providing it performs as expected, in an ideal world. In practical terms this equate
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The next step is waste motor oil. Newer diesels can't run on it worth a damn like they can on biodiesel, but old IDIs like my F250 and my 300SD have no trouble. You thin it with gasoline, which sounds scary but which works fine. It does have to be filtered, preferably down to 1 micron.
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Just wondering, how much crud is left behind after the filtering process?
It's a short step from this... (Score:2)
...to drive-by liposuction.
Fight Club (Score:2)
And creating a nuisance (Score:5, Funny)
What an embarrassing thing to have to admit to your cell mates...
He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Stealing garbage." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance."
And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
Alice's restaurant? (Score:2)
What an embarrassing thing to have to admit to your cell mates...
He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Stealing garbage." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance."
And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
Was the grease stolen from Alice's restaurant, noting that Alice's Restaurant is not the actual name of the restaurant?
Re:Alice's restaurant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you steal from Alice's restaurant when you can get anything you want there?
Re:Alice's restaurant? (Score:4, Funny)
excepting Alice ... but then we're talking rape, not regular theft
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excepting Alice ... but then we're talking rape, not regular theft
Rape is not any kind of theft unless you do it to a prostitute by not paying. And theft of a person is called kidnapping.
Re:Alice's restaurant? /= Alice (Score:2)
Excepting Alice...
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Long before kitchen grease was used for biofuel, it was and still is used to make soap.
35 years ago when I started working in the restaurant business, the grease had always
been collected in a barrel out back when it was time to change the fryers. and about once
a month a company would collect the contents of the barrel to go towards the production of soap.
Been that way for the last 35 years.
When I first read the above, I was horrified. Then I realized that it actually said soap, not soup like my mind substituted.