San Francisco expects to process 10,000 gallons of the grease every day (Photo by Rainer Zenz, source: Wikimedia Commons)
One city’s new program is taking the mucky sink-clogging grease from restaurants and converting it into fuel for its fleet of vehicles. As David Gorn reports, it’s the first effort of its kind in the nation:
Transcript
One city’s new program is taking the mucky sink-clogging grease from restaurants and converting it into fuel for its fleet of vehicles. As David Gorn reports, it’s the first effort of its kind in the nation:
It’s 6 in the morning, and a San Francisco sewage treatment plant is already in full gear.
(sound of a truck motor)
Workers are unloading a tankful of used cooking oil from local restaurants.
(sound of a man shouting)
But soon they’ll also be picking up something a little nastier from restaurants.
“Brown grease is culled out, pumped out by grease haulers and taken out of the city, often to landfills.”
That’s Karri Ving, biofuels coordinator for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. She says, instead of carting that grease off to a garbage dump, it will now be converted into biofuel.
“That material, that food material, is what we’re going to condense into a putty that gets converted into road-worthy biodiesel.”
Ving says San Francisco expects to process about 10,000 gallons of the
stuff every day.
Devin Smith and Matthew Rolen Stucky use waste oil from deep fryers
to power their diesel car (Photo by Katie Carey)
For many people, the summer road
trip includes trips to the beach, and of
course, frequent stops to the gas station.
Two college students are driving across the
country in a car that runs on used vegetable
oil. So when most people pull in to the gas
station this summer, they pull up to the
grease traps. They say it’s a way to raise
awareness about alternative fuels, and save
a bit of money. Katie Carey brings us this
audio postcard:
Transcript
For many people, the summer road
trip includes trips to the beach, and of
course, frequent stops to the gas station.
Two college students are driving across the
country in a car that runs on used vegetable
oil. So when most people pull in to the gas
station this summer, they pull up to the
grease traps. They say it’s a way to raise
awareness about alternative fuels, and save
a bit of money. Katie Carey brings us this
audio postcard:
MATT: My name is Matthew Rolen Stucky. I am taking this ’85 Mercedes Benz Diesel
with a grease car kit, putting old vegetable oil that we find from restaurants along the way
and sticking it in and making it go.
DEVIN: Hi, I’m Devin and we’re getting our fuel for the car from mainly restaurants
from the deep fryer. They dispose of the grease and we just take that and filter it a couple
times.
MATT: Well I pre-filter it – it’s basically a water filter. I have a couple mesh filters that
it goes through and then it goes through a second gas tank where it heats up and runs
through the car and then has one more engine filter that it goes through secondary. You
can drive this around everyday nearly in every situation and it doesn’t slow down your
gas mileage you have the same top speeds, the same acceleration, literally you will not be
able to tell the difference, until you realize you’re not buying the gas, and then you are
happy about it.
DEVIN: We have a journal in the car and we have a tally of how many hummers we’ve
seen on the road trip so far and I think the tally is to sixteen, and we kind of do a little
‘ha-ha’ every time we see one. Just because we know how much they are spending on
gas.
MATT: The reactions range from people saying, “Oh yeah, you are putting it in your car,
great, yeah here take it.” To people going “You do what? What does it do in your car?”
And they don’t believe it and they want to go see it sometimes.
DEVIN: Some people this is the first grease car they have ever seen and they just think it
is awesome that someone is out there doing it. It’s not a solution for everyone, again,
there’s not going to be waste vegetable oil for every single person that wants to drive in
the car around the country, so it definitely is not a solution to the fuel crisis. It’s just us
trying to do our part to raise awareness.
The Environmental Protection Agency says it has completed
toxic sediment cleanup at one of the most polluted sites along the Great
Lakes. There are 31 such sites in the U.S. known as “Areas of Concern.”
Officials say this site is one step closer to being cleaned up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland reports:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency says it has completed toxic sediment
cleanup at one of the most polluted sites along the Great Lakes. There are
31 such sites in the U.S. known as “Areas of Concern.” Officials say this
site is one step closer to being cleaned up. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland reports:
The Black Lagoon along the Detroit River in Trenton, Michigan, got its name
because years of industrial contamination had discolored the water. Months of
dredging has changed that.
Dennis Schornack is the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission.
It monitors the water quality treaty between the U.S. and Canada.
“Over 115-thousand cubic yards of muck, heavily contaminated with
PCB’s, oil, grease, mercury and other toxic metals, have been removed from
the Detroit River, and disposed of and secured in a facility that will be operated
by the Detroit district of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.”
Three years ago, the Great Lakes Legacy Act authorized 270-million dollars
over five years to clean up the pollution hot-spots. It’s never been
fully funded, and is currently paying for cleanup work at only two other
sites along the Lakes.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it’s beginning the first clean-up project under the Great Lakes Legacy Act. The measure allots 270 million dollars in federal funding over five years to target contaminated sediment in the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has details:
Transcript
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it is beginning the first
clean up project under the Great Lakes Legacy Act. The measure alots 270 million dollars
in federal funding over five years to garget contaminated sediment in the region. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has details:
The EPA and the state of Michigan will spend 6.5 million dollars to clean up the Black
Lagoon on the Detroit River. The area was given its name when aerial pictures showed oil
and grease swirling in the lagoon. The project is the first that will take place under the
new Great Lakes Legacy Act. EPA administrator Mike Leavitt says plans to build a new housing
development nearby played a role in making the Black Lagoon project a priority.
“The most important thing is the where we can make the biggest difference and the fastest.
Because there is a good plan in place that will not just improve the environment, but also
boost the economy, that’s so much the better.”
The EPA says about 90 thousand cubic yards of sediment contaminated with oil, mercury, and
PCBs will be dredged from the Black Lagoon. The agency says the project should begin
in mid-October and be completed by mid-January.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jerome Vaughn in Detroit.
San Francisco expects to process 10,000 gallons of the grease every day (Photo by Rainer Zenz, source: Wikimedia Commons)