Trash worth cash

Restaurant owners guard their used oil, now a hot property targeted by thieves

By F.B. Drake III

Tidings correspondent

July 24, 2009

Long the scourge of the restaurant business, old fryer oil is now a valuable commodity, and people will steal it. The oil is used to make biodiesel and many go out of their way to acquire it.

Reports from the New York Times, The Associated Press and National Public Radio have noted the theft rate increases as gas prices rise. The oil is traded as a commodity and the city of San Francisco now has a program in which it collects the oil and uses it to power city buses and fire trucks.

Local businesses have taken precautions to protect their oil, which was once something they paid to have removed.

“I remember those years of paying for removal,” said Elks Club Chef Joshua Parliament. “Southern Oregon Tallow was the first to start paying for the oil, even though it was just nickels.”

Parliament said he had issues at other restaurants where the oil would get stolen, but the new company, Rogue Biofuel, has “pretty fool-proof containers.”

“Rogue is a good company, and I’d rather see them take the oil away,” Parliament said. “They do the refining properly.”

Ron Roth of Geppetto’s restaurant has lots of experience dealing with old restaurant oil and its theft. He is doing what many in Ashland are — giving the oil to a local who produces the fuel.

Roth keeps the old oil in the original jugs it came in, and it is removed bi-weekly.

“When we started giving the oil to the biodiesel people we stored it in drums in the alley,” Roth said. “It started disappearing, so we started keeping it inside about a year ago. Since we’ve been keeping it inside, it doesn’t get stolen anymore.”

Rogue Biofuel of Central Point has many Ashland accounts, and Vice President Gabriel Rowland said biodiesel has “a huge global market,” and deals with the theft issue daily.

“We know a lot about that,” Rowland said. “Some of our accounts are a long way away and to show up to an empty bin costs the company money.”

Rowland said that, in eastern Oregon, restaurants still pay to have oil removed, but it is not the case anymore in most of the state. In the past week, the company opened a 3,000-gallon gas station on Highway 99 in Ashland, which sells the biodiesel it produces. He said a major issue is the quality of biodiesel produced by those who are stealing the oil.

“A lot of this fuel is creating a bad name for biodiesel,” Rowland said, “and it is difficult for us to overcome.”

Parliament has seen bad biodiesel in action.

“Good biodiesel is actually a refined product,” Parliament said. “The guy going down the highway with black smoke coming out of his exhaust and a ‘powered by bio-diesel’ sticker is just polluting.”

Another restaurant which has people remove their oil to make diesel is the Standing Stone Brewery on Oak Street. Chef Eric Bell keeps his oil tucked away in an enclosed area, and believes if it didn’t get removed on a regular basis, it too would get stolen.

“It doesn’t happen much here because there are arrangements,” Bell said. “In Salt Lake City, many times some hip people would show up at your door and ask for it, but many times it would just get stolen.”

Bell hopes to eventually use the oil himself to power the equipment needed to run his dream farm, which will produce food for the brewery. Bell has made biodiesel before.

“The exhaust smells like French fries,” he said.