Recycling waste grease in San Francisco

The City of San Francisco announced earlier this week that it will start a free grease recycling service called SF Greasecycle. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, commercial food preparation establishments (think restaurants and hotels) can donate used oil to the city, which will send out trucks to pick up the fuel and deliver it to local biodiesel producers that will turn it into biofuel. The Chronicle says that "San Francisco officials believe theirs will be the largest such effort" and that the hope is to expand the service to home and individual oil users in the future. The biodiesel will initially be used by MUNI buses, but eventually all city diesel vehicles will likely be run on this locally-recycled fuel.
This is sensible and good news. The Biodiesel Blog, where I first caught wind of the announcement, calls it great. By taking the waste oil out of the garbage stream (lots gets illegally dumped into sewers) and into the fuel system, San Francisco is showing other cities how to solve multiple problems at once. Since the city has long had a plan to use more biodiesel in its fleet (see links below), shifting the biomass source from Midwest soybeans to local waste is just smart planning. Read the details in the Chronicle.

Related:

• San Francisco opens first commercial B20 station
• San Francisco gets Executive Directive to use more biodiesel
• San Francisco will use biodiesel in emergency fleets

[Source: Biodiesel Blog]