Aarrrr! ‘Biodiesel Pirates’ Stealing Used Cooking Oil

Green business owners hoping to make money off used cooking oil to fuel vehicles have had a frustrating problem lately: ‘biodiesel pirates’ have been stealing their oil. As the price of gas rises ever higher, and many commuters find that their local mass transit systems aren’t so great, people are getting more and more desperate.

From MSNBC:

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.

“It’s like a war zone going on right now over grease,” said David Levenson, who owns a grease hauling business in San Francisco’s Mission District. “We’re seeing more and more people stealing grease because it lets them stay away from the pump, but it’s hurting our bottom line.”

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.

Sounds like some improved locks are in order. It seems like it was only a matter of time before people started realizing that used cooking oil was pretty easy to come by, and a lot of folks have come to expect that they can help themselves to it when it’s unsecured outside restaurants. If you want to make money off of it, you’ve got to protect it from thieves, people. Unfortunately, even ‘green’ folks can be dishonest.

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Flickr user Per Ola Wiberg

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