Restaurant waste oil grease thefts on the rise
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]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Stringfellow Hawk 8:40PM (6/01/2008)
I dont get it. I thought restaurants had to pay for this stuff to be removed? I figured grease bandit fights in the alley would be the news.
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Jrejre 11:46PM (6/01/2008)
My understanding is that legally they have to pay to have it removed by someone licensed to do it. This is to prevent them from just dumping it into a dumpster or down the alley. Therefore they can't just give it away.
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Doug 12:06AM (6/02/2008)
Ach!! My retirement grease!!!
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Rick 7:18PM (6/02/2008)
It's only an issue because some restuarants were trying to sell the oil. Now that people are stealing 'waste', 'trash', 'unused and unwanted' byproduct that for YEARS was THROWN away, it's suddenly an issue that people now find it' valuable. Now, restuarants can't be greedy and charge for what they used to pay to throw away.
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Zigster 10:14AM (6/02/2008)
Either the restaurant is selling the grease, in which case they can afford to lock it up, or it isn't, in which case they should just let people use it.
I doubt this is even a problem on the east coast cities where biodiesel production is relatively uncommon.
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