Dining-Out Drought Means Less Food Grease to Fuel Biofuel Hopes
With fewer people eating out, refiners with millions on the line are racing to secure used cooking oil to feed their plants.
Workers use a hose to transfer oil from a dumpster into a grease collection truck in San Francisco, California.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesEvery day, Miko Del Rosario oversees nine trucks that crisscross Southern California, weaving through alleys behind shopping malls, restaurants and a tortilla chip factory to pick up cooking oil drained from deep fryers.
The grease is filtered at his Anaheim plant to remove leftover bits of food, before it’s sold to refiners who turn it into biodiesel— a lucrative business in a state which offers generous subsidies for using scrap oils to generate fuel. But with coronavirus restrictions hurting eateries across California, Del Rosario’s daily intake has fallen 40% from before the pandemic to about 15,000 gallons a day even as orders keep coming in.