WATSONVILLE, CA [June 13, 2007]--Waste vegetable oil collected from thousands of California restaurants and food service facilities between San Luis Obispo and Santa Rosa is now being used to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Biodiesel producer Energy Alternative Solutions, Inc. (EASI) and renderers Salinas Tallow Company and San Jose Tallow are partnering with California restaurants in a new, large-scale program to recycle used cooking oil into ASTM-certified biodiesel fuel.
Participating restaurants—-which range from fast food joints and taquerias to four-star dining establishments-—will begin displaying window stickers denoting their involvement in the program in the coming weeks. The round red, white, blue, and gold stickers feature the silhouette of a bear and read: "Our cooking oil is recycled into biodiesel fuel to help reduce global warming."
"I think the program is fantastic," said Michael Scanlon, General Manager for the Shadowbrook Restaurant in Capitola. "It turns a waste product into a useful product that reduces emissions and reduces our dependence on foreign oil. We need to get everybody doing it so that we can increase the raw materials needed for commercial-scale biodiesel production and encourage more people to drive biodiesel-powered vehicles."
For decades, San Jose Tallow and Salinas Tallow Company have been collecting grease from area restaurants and food service facilities to keep it from clogging wastewater drains and rendering it for various uses. The opening of EASI's first biodiesel production plant in Gonzales, California in December created a new large-scale use for the grease that will ultimately help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proven that a B20 biodiesel blend (20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent petroleum diesel) can reduce harmful emissions by 44 percent.
EASI currently processes about 13,000 pounds of recycled cooking oil collected from local restaurants into biodiesel each week, and will be expanding operations over the summer. EASI plans to build seven additional biodiesel plants in California within the next five years. For more information on EASI’s biodiesel production, visit
www.bioeasi.com.###
