Photo by Pylbug. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

Teach a man to eat fish & chips and he'll enjoy his lunch. Teach a man to turn fish & chip oil into biodiesel, and he'll drive a cleaner car. As the Onion once said, stereotypes are a real time saver. So, I don't have to tell you how much those Brits love their fish & chips, right? Now, though, the food that's eaten by every single British person at least two times a day is also contributing to the green fuel movement in the UK. According to the AFP, a group called the Low Impact Living Initiative (LILI) is out teaching classes on how to turn waste grease into biodiesel. Their favorite source of used oil is fish and chip shops, which, by law in the UK, must be placed every 50 feet all along the country so that a Briton never need stop eating the battered fish or deep fried potatoes. Thus far, LILI has taught over 1,000 people how to process the oil into biodiesel, and told the paper that each rise in fuel prices brings in more people, each one of them carrying three serving of fish and chips.

You know, reading this post over again, I think I may have exaggerated a bit here and there.

[Source: AFP]

Photo by Paul Keleher. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

Yesterday, driving around the Detroit suburbs, I saw a man holding up a sign along the side of the road that read, "We buy gold inside Kroger." (Kroger is a large grocery store chain). It seemed to me that the man making (I'm guessing) minimum wage to hold a piece of cardboard alerting people that they can hawk their jewelery at the local grocery store for quick cash is one of those sure signs that the economy is failing (necklace for noodles, anyone?). Another sure sign in my eyes are the increased incidents of people stealing waste grease from restaurants.

This isn't new, and folks have been stealing standard fuel, too. But the New York Times reports that grease bandits are more active now than ever before, trying to steal waste grease to supply biofuel providers and move our vehicles. Part of the reason is that this stuff is a commodity, trading at around 33 cents a pound this week, up from under eight cents in 2000, thanks to biodiesel producer demand. To help prevent thieves from taking gas straight out of the tank, vehicle drivers can buy a locking gas cap. What are restaurants supposed to do? Buy huge locking dumpsters? Kind of. Some restaurant owners are considering putting surveillance cameras out back to keep an eye on the liquid waste.

[Source: New York Times]

It used to be that restaurants had to pay to have their waste oil taken away. Then, with the boom in homemade biodiesel, people were willing to schlepp it away for free, which made everyone happy. I ', pretty sure there are some areas today where biodiesel groups are paying to take the oil away. But, with the high gas prices and the easy-to-understand value of waste oil, said oil is disappearing from restaurants in Wichita, Kansas, reports KWCH-TV. As Healy Biodiesel owner Ben Healy tells the station, "Oil is really the life blood of our company and if we don't have oil, there's nothing for us to do here. Every gallon of oil that is stolen from us is a gallon of oil we can't sell."

[Source: KWCH]

Gavin Shappiro sent us a very well edited video of a green hobby: driving a 2005 Volkswagen Golf TDI with vegetable oil. As most of our readers know, converting a diesel car to run on vegetable oil is not a difficult thing to do, and virtually any diesel car can run with it. Gavin's friend Chase Emmons, who owns the Golf TDI, obtains the oil for free from restaurants, which would usually have to pay to get their waste oil removed. The video also shows the important switch that is used to switch from diesel to vegetable oil, since these cars need to be started with regular diesel to warm the veggie oil.

UPDATE: actually, the owner of this car is Chase Emmons, and Shappiro created the video with him. Minor edits made to the story to reflect this.

Find the video after the jump.

Seriously: what do you do with your leftover cooking oil? Most people just pour it down the drain (not pointing any fingers, here). This is quite bad for a couple of reasons: first because it can affect waste water treatment plants and second because a potential fuel is lost. We have written a lot about how used oils can be made into car fuel before; today we have three more examples about global initiatives to raise awareness about recycling used oil.

Let's go first to Murcia, Spain. It's a region where water is scarce and the prospects of using recycled water seems very attractive. But not when it's got lots of fat in it. Therefore, the concession in charge of waste management has delivered free funnels to all households in the city of Molina de Segura which people can use with empty soda bottles. Once full, the bottles can be brought at any local grocery shop or school to be recycled.

Further north, in Scotland, in Kilmarock County, there's a project to use recycled oil for local bus transportation. The company exchanges used oil for bus tickets. A grease container has been delivered for free to all houses the bus lines serve.

Finally, Brazil is going large and has announced a network of small local biodiesel plants which would use waste oil from local restaurants and households. This network will be backed up financially by the Brazilian Society for Science Progress (SBPC). Brazil announced this project not only as something that will allow the country to produce enough biodiesel for its B2 introduction plans, but also because it is a positive social effect (involving citizens in recycling and creating local jobs). The plan is expected to be implemented next April but an experimental plant is already working in Indaiatuba (São Paulo). Biodiesel obtained with this procedure costs 40 cents per liter, compared to 90 cents for "all-new" biodiesel.

[Source: Cadena Ser, Agroinformación, Econoticias]

As a blogger for AutoblogGreen, I read about waste vegetable oil used as a car fuel daily but I have to admit to a "WTF?" moment when reading about details of what fuels were used by San Francisco's new fully biodiesel-capable fleet. According to the New York Times, the fleet uses virgin soy from the Midwest in a B20 mix ... and the city of San Francisco wants your used grease. Cue the sound of a record player needle being loudly pushed off an LP. They want what?

Yes, the Times writes about the new SFGreasecycle, which you will remember was launched in November with a website run by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, that will collect waste vegetable oil from homes and restaurants for free and convert it to biodiesel. This is the first city-wide program that collects used veggie oil for its car fleet, an activity usually seen as something done by small garage companies. If you have not seen or don't recall the hilarious 1977 movie The Kentucky Fried Movie, enjoy the predictive powers of comedy in a clip below the fold.

I am not making fun of San Francisco because I think this is a good program. They have the greenest car fleet in the nation. It will save money, reduce waste and hopefully inspire more agencies and companies to collect waste vegetable oil but can you imagine the average Joe reading about this program in the Times? WTF!

[Source: New York Times]

The City of San Francisco announced earlier this week that it will start a free grease recycling service called SF Greasecycle. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, commercial food preparation establishments (think restaurants and hotels) can donate used oil to the city, which will send out trucks to pick up the fuel and deliver it to local biodiesel producers that will turn it into biofuel. The Chronicle says that "San Francisco officials believe theirs will be the largest such effort" and that the hope is to expand the service to home and individual oil users in the future. The biodiesel will initially be used by MUNI buses, but eventually all city diesel vehicles will likely be run on this locally-recycled fuel.

This is sensible and good news. The Biodiesel Blog, where I first caught wind of the announcement, calls it great. By taking the waste oil out of the garbage stream (lots gets illegally dumped into sewers) and into the fuel system, San Francisco is showing other cities how to solve multiple problems at once. Since the city has long had a plan to use more biodiesel in its fleet (see links below), shifting the biomass source from Midwest soybeans to local waste is just smart planning. Read the details in the Chronicle.

Related:

• San Francisco opens first commercial B20 station
• San Francisco gets Executive Directive to use more biodiesel
• San Francisco will use biodiesel in emergency fleets

[Source: Biodiesel Blog]

The 20th World Solar Challenge took place in Australia in October. One of the more unusual fuel types in the Greenfleet Class of the Darwin to Adelaide race was used by a "Troupy," a lightly modified 1989 Toyota Landcruiser.

According to Pure Energy Systems, the diesel-engined Troupy made the 3,000 kilometer-drive using a fuel called Bios Fuel H2W+, which is 40 percent water and 60 percent waste mineral oil.

Here's how PES describes it:

Bios Fuel claims to have developed a water-based fuel technology that allows hydrogen to be housed safely in water and released on demand for numerous applications. A proprietary catalyst allows water to be suspended in waste oil as an emulsion. The fuel is designed for power generation. It is one of several blends that Bios Fuel has certified to American ASTM standards.

While it is not designed for vehicles, it ran well in the 1989 Toyota Landcruiser Troop Carrier, or "Troupy" as they are affectionately called in the outback. "We thought testing in a harsh environment such as the Australian desert would demonstrate the viability of our fuel beyond doubt, and show that 2nd and 3rd generation waste can be combined with water to provide an energy source", said Bios Fuel founder and CEO Steve Ryan. "Using an old Troupy shows that you don't necessarily have to compromise lifestyle to reduce your effect on the environment".

There is a history of hype surrounding the idea of placing water into a vehicle's fuel tank, but I'll say - for now - that this appears to be legit. NZ Biofuels sent out a press release on the accomplishment and biosfuel.org has a slick PDF on H2W+ (and related fuels). If you've got a critical take on this fuel (or want to sing its praises), please share it with our readers in the comments below. It seems difficult to fake traveling 3,000 km in a media-rich environment like the Panasonic World Solar Challenge, doesn't it?

[Source: Sterling D. Allan / Pure Energy Systems News, h/t to Tim]