Grease Cars & Green Skiing

Turning fat into fuel...

This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams in for Lester Graham.

San Franscisco is taking the mucky sewer-clogging grease from restaurants... and making it into fuel for its fleet of vehicles. David Gorn stopped by the city’s sewage treatment plant to see how this is going to work. So what’d you find out?

Well it’s pretty interesting. San Franscisco was one of the first in the nation to start a cooking oil program. They go to restaurants and they collect the used cooking oil and they convert that into biofuel. Now they’re launching another project where they’re taking something nastier, uglier – the brown grease that gets caught in sink traps of restaurants. So I met with Karri Ving she’s the biofuels coordinator for the San Franscisco Public Utilities Commission. She says instead of carting all that grease off to a garbage dump it can now be converted into biodiesel.

“That material that food material is what we’re gonna condense into a putty that gets converted into a road worthy biodiesel.”

So how did this place smell?

(laughs) Like popcorn!

Ok thanks David.

Thank you.


STING


This is the Environment Report.

One industry that’s worried about the heat of global warming is the ski industry. You know, snow’s kind of important. So some resorts are trying to do something to help. Irene Noguchi reports one resort created a special new job to lighten its footprint:


[Background fade in: Sounds of rustling cans.]

Ross Freeman crawls into a giant recycling container. He holds a long rake and shuffles the cans inside.

Freeman [0:08]: “We actually fill this thing up to the brim with recycling. Ends up being 2,000 or 2,500 pounds of recycling we send off the mountain every 10 to 12 days.”

[Background fade out: Noise of mixing cans around.]

This is part of his job. Ross Freeman is the eco-steward at Stevens Pass. It’s a ski resort tucked in the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. His official title is “Environment and Sustainability Manager.” Stevens Pass created that position last year, when it wanted to make itself more eco-friendly.

Freeman says ski resorts are feeling the effects of global warming and less snow. So they’re pushing more money into going green. Freeman says his job covers everything. He drags out furniture that can’t go in the landfill. He recycles rubber wheels from the ski lifts...

Freeman [0:15]: “—then the next moment I’m up in the office designing a policy for vehicle idling, then I’m applying for grants, applying for industry awards, then I’m out in the food and beverage world, talking to cooks and chefs in the kitchens to figure out how we can be more efficient and waste less food.”

All this is part of the resort’s efforts to meet the national “green” standards. The National Ski Areas Association sets the environmental guidelines it wants resorts to follow. But the program is voluntary.

Ryan Bidwell is the executive director of Colorado Wild. It’s an environmental group that grades ski resorts. So how did Stevens Pass score on the environmental report card?

Bidwell [0:17]: “Stevens received a ‘C’ because it has some expansion plans that would extend the resort into currently undeveloped areas and would impact those sensitive areas. So they lose a few points on that side.”

But Bidwell says hiring an eco-steward like Ross Freeman is a step in the right direction.

[Background fade in: Feet crunching through snow.]

Freeman says there are only a few jobs like his. But he hopes more ski resorts will start hiring folks like him when they go green.

That’s the Environment Report for today. I’m Rebecca Williams.