So spaketh Groundskeeper Willie on The Simpsons when he caught Homer and Bart siphoning off the decades-old cooking grease from the elementary school cafeteria.
It was big laffs 15 years ago or so. But like so much else, what was once parody becomes reality: today’s NY Times reports that As Oil Prices Soar, Restaurant Grease Thefts Rise.
I have to say: a year or two ago, when it was hard to turn around on the internet without reading someone extolling the virtues of converting a diesel car to run on used grease, pointing out that it was free or even cost-positive to do so, I kept thinking that this wouldn’t last. Obviously, it was only free to get grease as long as no one actually had a car that ran on it. Just a few such cars would quickly exhaust any local restaurant production, driving the cost of the grease up to the cost of any other auto fuel.
If there is a need for more grease there is a simple solution. Simply build more Waffle Houses across the country. That will produce a tremendous amount of grease!
This will only lead to Soylent Grease.
Well, Grease IS the word…
It wasn’t parody. According to Wikipedia - and the DVD commentary for that episode, I think - the episode was based on a real newspaper article about grease thefts.
I still remember my last pre-college summer job at a restaurant: a couple of times I had to dump the fryer grease into the disgusting container so some company could come and take it away. The manager never mentioned fuel as an end product. He told me it was used in chapstick and things.
(throwing chapstick away), oh dear Og.
It’s simple supply and demand. When no-one wants your used grease, you have to pay someone to take it away and dispose of it in an environmentally safe manner.
If one person is willing to take it away for free, you smile and say thanks.
If two people want it… bidding war! (or theft).
You can dig your chapstick out of the garbage - it’s made with petrolatum, mineral oil, wax, menthol, and other non-cooking grease ingredients.
I recall seeing a TV show that featured a man who had made a device that took used cooking oil and filtered and processed it into a diesel substitute. I kept thinking as I watched the show - there’s no way enough people could do that on discarded grease to make it viable. I kept hoping they’d tell how many vehicles could run on an average city’s grease discards - I’m guessing it’s not a huge fleet.