The NY Times ran an interesting story today on grease theft. I love this bit:

The suspects in a growing number of grease infractions fall into a range of categories, people interviewed on the matter said, as grease theft is a crime of opportunity. They include do-it-yourself environmentalists worried about their carbon footprints, warring waste management firms trying to beat each other on the sly, and petty thieves who are profiting from the oil’s rising value on the black market.

Doesn’t “do-it-yourself environmentalist” sound disparaging? How dare they try to be environmentalists on their own! How pathetic that they worry over their carbon footprint. And “petty thieves” profiting on the black market! I love that one!

I never felt comfortable taking oil from a container without the permission of the restaurant. The relevant question though seems to be, is discarded fryer oil garbage? “Once you put something in the trash, it’s abandoned property,” said Jon A. Jaworski, a lawyer in Houston who represents accused grease thieves. “A lot of times, it’s not theft.” I am not a lawyer but I wonder about this. I have heard that trash is pretty much free for the taking. Trash has some monetary value. Some items can be salvaged or recycled.And, the container is usually owned by the proprietor, company or municipality hauling away the trash. How is discarded grease any different?

This quote from the article may give us a glimpse of what we might expect in the near future.

At Olympia Pizza and Pasta, Mr. Damianidis [the owner], who now sells his grease for a small monthly fee, finds the problem of stolen fryer oil quite annoying and distracting. And he wants to stop the thefts. He is leaning toward a security camera and hoping for the best.

“I cook food,” Mr. Damianidis said. “I’m not going to stay up until 2 in the morning trying to catch someone stealing a barrel of grease.”

I am reposting this post from July 26, 2006…

For a long time I have wanted to determine definitively how much cleaner svo (straight vegetable oil) burns compared to diesel and compared to gasoline. In a post on the lovecraftbiofuels website forum, Stephen Blackburn posts the results from having his car smogged. Remember, in California diesel vehicles are exempt from smog inspections (brilliant idea, eh?).

The results are impressive and confirm what many of us have believed all along, namely that using vegetable oil as a fuel reduces dangerous emissions significantly, even compared to many late model gasoline powered cars.

Here are the highlights:

1. HC (Hydrocarbons) – 8 ppm (parts per million)
   • new cars are allowed 40 ppm
2. CO% (Carbon Monoxide per gallon of fuel burned): 0.03%
   • new cars are allowed 0.9%
3. CO2% (Carbon Dioxide per gal. fuel burned) 14.3
   • Average is 14-15%. NOTE: the carbon removed from the air while growing the plants is greater than that released when it is burned. Therefore, airborne carbon is reduced with svo as a fuel.

Read the post for more details. One of these days I’ll get my car smogged to see how it rates on these emission measures. If anyone else out there has had their vegcar smogged, please send me the results.

According to the BBC, a UN report cites rising demand for biofuels as a contributor to higher food prices. :

“Biofuels are the largest new source of demand for agriculture and are causing higher prices,” said Merritt Cluff, one of the authors of the report.

“We are very worried particularly about biofuel policy. US government incentives for ethanol producers are distorting the market,” he added.

Unfortunately, the people hardest hit by rising food prices are the poorest people in the world, who spend a larger share of their income on food.

This is the result many of us feared from the increased use of vegetable oils to make biodiesel and ethanol. I hope that we will see a rapid increase in non-petroleum oil production from sources that don’t compete with traditional food crops. The one that first comes to mind is algae.

Yesterday I filled up my Chevy S10 Pickup with gasoline. It was $69! One friend told me her vehicle is $80 to fill up. I have been into energy conservation for many years, motivated mainly by the desire to minimize my impact on the environment. Now, with the current high energy prices there is a new motivation to save money.

I feel bad for all of the people who are struggling to make their house payments and keep food on the table. High fuel costs are only compounding the problem.

I do hope that more municipalities will invest in good public transportation. I also hope that the momentum in the development of alternative fuels will continue to build. Businesses and individuals now have the financial incentive to buy smaller vehicles, press congress for higher CAFE standards and most importantly, conserve.

This article in today’s New York Times talks about how the high fuel prices are causing people to carpool and using public transportation. High fuel prices are painful for many people but in the long run they will be seen as a catalyst for finally getting our country on track with sane, smart energy policies.

Crude oil futures continue their run up, hitting $129/barrel today on the NYMEX.

In California, anyone who transports “Inedible Kitchen Grease” is required to have a license issued by the Meat and Poultry Inspection Branch of the Department of Food and Agriculture. On the Department’s website, they explain that the Inedible Kitchen Grease program exists to:

1. deter the theft of Inedible Kitchen Grease.
2. deter the illegal disposal of Inedible Kitchen Grease that may damage our environment or sewage systems.

There is a link on that page to the actual application. The application states that the Registration fee is $100 plus an annual enforcement fee of $300 per vehicle up to a maximum of $3,000.

The LA Times ran a very interesting article on vegcars, road taxes and other regulatory bureaucracy that is hampering the vegetable oil as fuel movement. Fees to become an “Inedible Grease Transporter” have increased in California to more than $400 per year. And there is a fee to become a “Fuel Supplier” that is apparently being imposed on people supplying safe, non-flammable vegetable oil for fuel.

According to the article, the State of California has cited a few people for not paying the18 cent per gallon road tax. As I have written about previously, there are several states that have exempted cars running on veg oil from paying the road tax altogether as a reward for burning a carbon neutral fuel.

It seems that even our Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was unaware of having to pay this tax.

The regulations are so burdensome that even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, trying to set an example for Californians by driving a Hummer that burns cooking oil he buys at Costco, had not complied. Schwarzenegger, who has said that the exhaust from his Hummer smells so much like French fries that his passengers get hunger pangs, was unaware that he was required to send Sacramento an 18-cent road tax for every gallon of kitchen oil he burned, according to spokesman Aaron McLear. After The Times raised the issue, McLear said the governor would pay the taxes he owed.

I recently came across a new blog you might want to check out. It is called GreaseDrive. It seems this person has a 1984 300D also, though with a two-tank conversion.

Hello GreaseDrive! Welcome to the blogosphere.