Restaurant owners have to guard their grease
A year ago, restaurants had to pay someone to haul their used fryer grease away, now the have to consider installing surveillance cameras just to keep people for stealing it. As fuel prices continue to climb, grease rustling has become big business for all sorts of yahoos with a truck and a pump. "Yellow grease," as it's called, which was thought of as trash only a couple of years ago -- is now being traded on the commodities market for $2.50 a gallon.
With the proper conversion kit, "yellow grease" can be used as an additive in fuel or even burn on its own like a low grade form of diesel -- and then your exhaust smells like fried chicken, or pizza. It used to be mainly environmentalist/cheapskates who wanted to drive away with your used grease, but with the soaring value of the stuff, petty thieves and opportunists are getting in on the action.
Now that the cat's out of the bag, grease traps are being raided all over the country -- and police are treating like any other form of theft. A man was recently busted in California stealing grease from Burger King, he had 2,500 gallons of grease in his truck. That's $6,000 worth, talk about record profits!
[via Treehugger]
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