Grease Is The Word

[March 1st, 2006] With shaky energy sources driving markets to consider biodiesel, Portland restaurants are increasingly getting their cooking oil and bacon grease converted into the alternative fuel.

The Oregon Restaurant Association says more and more of its members are getting their now-prized grease removed for free—to be used for biodiesel—instead of paying $40 to $60 per month to have their fryer vats emptied. And even those that never paid for the service are getting cred with enviros along the way.

"Biodiesel is the buzz," says Elizabeth Peters, a spokeswoman for the trade group.

The association does not track numbers to document the shift. But nationally, interest in biodiesel has caused a well-documented shakeup in a century-old industry known as animal fat and oil rendering, which traditionally converted the restaurants' grease into products like cattle feed and lipstick.

Locally, Castagna Restaurant on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard once paid $50 per month to have its grease hauled away by Oregon Oils, which supplies oil to a cattle-feed producer. Six months ago, the restaurant started donating its oil to the Portland-based GoBiodiesel Cooperative.

"The economic impact is pretty minimal," says restaurant manager Nate Tilden. "But we like that they're doing a good thing for the environment."

Portland-based Metro Rooter & Plumbing started looking into biodiesel a year and a half ago. The company now sells all the oil it collects from restaurants to SeQuential Biofuels, a refining company that distributes to five filling stations in Portland and 30 other outlets in Oregon.

MR&P's move to sell the grease for biodiesel conversion, instead of to companies that render it for lipstick, has helped it attract more clients.

"We get a lot of people who are saying to us, 'We want to get on the wagon,'" says manager Paul Hardman.

The company's biggest client, Burgerville USA, signed an agreement Jan. 1. All of its fast-food fryer grease will now end up in fuel tanks.

Most of the oil collectors wanting points for environmental friendliness have not yet reached the point of offering their service for free. But who knows, as the biodiesel market grows?

The push for alternative fuels also has spawned a local cottage industry of home biodiesel brewers and other small operators who collect cooking oil directly from restaurants.

Fire on the Mountain Buffalo Wings on North Interstate Avenue donates its grease to the GoBiodiesel Cooperative, which collects 50 to 100 gallons of used cooking oil per week from up to eight Portland restaurants, said Michael VanDerwater, the co-op's general manager.

In a few months, the co-op plans to ramp up its collections and sell fuel to its 110 members for $2.25 per gallon at a site on Southeast Johnson Creek Boulevard, compared with about $3 per gallon at other Portland biodiesel stations.

Jordan Busch, co-owner of Fire on the Mountain, says he gives the waste oil to GoBiodiesel because "society should be less reliant on imported oil."

Another collector of Portland grease, L.A.-based Baker Commodities, has copped on to the biodiesel trend so much that it may put as much as $54 million toward opening its own biodiesel refineries, one each in Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles, says Fred Wellons, director of research and development.

The plants could each process 30 million gallons of fuel per year, which Wellons says would top "our total collections in Los Angeles."

"Maybe this is something else we can do as a service to the community," Wellons adds. "Maybe we could help generate electricity with it."