How to Turn 'Waste' Grease into Gold

Waste vegetable oil has become a valuable by-product of the restaurant industry. Most restaurants produce quite a bit of it, so it’s only logical to figure out ways to use the grease once it has served its cooking and frying purposes. Thanks to modern ingenuity, there are a handful of ways restaurants can make even better use out of this green-colored gold.

The majority of biodiesel companies out there don’t charge for pickup of waste vegetable oil (WVO). In fact, sometimes they even pay restaurants for the waste oil!

What’s WVO? Waste vegetable oil is used to fuel converted diesel engines. Conversion kits work by using a dual tank to blend waste oil with diesel fuel (different from biodiesel, which comes already blended at the pump).

Sound difficult? It’s not.

Chef Jose Duarte, owner of Taranta Restaurant in Boston, was looking for ways to save when he decided to convert his Chevy pickup to run on WVO. Duarte purchases fresh, local seafood from Gloucester, Mass., every day and was feeling the burden of rising fuel costs when he heard about a local group that could help him convert his truck to run on his waste oil. Now, he’s saving a few thousand dollars a year on fuel costs, and he’s organized a program with his local restaurant friends to gather their WVO, too.

Who else is doing this? Famed restaurateur Joe Bastianich converted his truck to run on waste vegetable oil, which he collects from his New York hotspots including Del Posto, Pizzeria Otto, Esca and more.

Keep it clean. Waste vegetable oil and grease can be used for a number of things, one of which is making soap. Osteria Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza, two of the Batali-Bastianich’s restaurants in L.A., give their waste oil to a local company that turns the WVO into biodiesel and uses the byproduct, glycerin, to make hand soap for the restaurants. The restaurants then get the soap in return for customers to use in the restrooms at both locations.