An interesting story recently ran in the Herald Tribune talking about a budding cooking-oil recycling industry. As you can read about in the story, the movement to convert used cooking oil into gas for cars is gaining a little traction and greater acceptance by motorists.
"Two years ago, in the affluent London suburb of Leatherhead, Chris Leveritt starting filtering oil from his restaurant, Trattoria Vecchia, to run the family car. He is now creating a small commercial factory to produce 132 gallons a day in his backyard. Leveritt's partner, a wine distributor, picks up jugs of used oil when he delivers wine to dozens of restaurants in and around London." (Full article here.)
Though, admittedly limited still only to those who are a bit crazy-tree-hugger-esque, the news bodes well for the environment as it points to people trying to think and act a little differently as well as the fact that awareness about the human impact on earth systems is slowly getting more and more mainstreamed. It does not however say much about reducing consumption or curtailing the habits and luxuries that have led to this crisis. One step at a time though right?
"Two years ago, in the affluent London suburb of Leatherhead, Chris Leveritt starting filtering oil from his restaurant, Trattoria Vecchia, to run the family car. He is now creating a small commercial factory to produce 132 gallons a day in his backyard. Leveritt's partner, a wine distributor, picks up jugs of used oil when he delivers wine to dozens of restaurants in and around London." (Full article here.)
Though, admittedly limited still only to those who are a bit crazy-tree-hugger-esque, the news bodes well for the environment as it points to people trying to think and act a little differently as well as the fact that awareness about the human impact on earth systems is slowly getting more and more mainstreamed. It does not however say much about reducing consumption or curtailing the habits and luxuries that have led to this crisis. One step at a time though right?
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Good points:
ReplyDelete1. Noting this the trend of running cars on vegetable oil
2. Pointing out that this doesn't really get at the deeper problem of relying on cars as the main mode of transportation (at least in the US)
One additional note: I understand there is a small, but growing cottage industry around converting old Mercedes Benz to run on straight vegetable oil (or biodiesel). A friend of mine in Orange County has actually converted a car for his own purposes (he gets free used vegetable oil from the Japanese restaurant in his neighborhood that would otherwise have to PAY to have the oil disposed of), and has a very small side business buying old Benz's, fixing them up to run on vegetable oil, and selling them for a small profit.
Here's a link from a CNN article on this phenomenom: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/06/26/vegetable.oil.vehicle/index.html