San Francisco Converting Restaurant Grease to Bio-Diesel

San Francisco will become the first city to institute a program to convert "brown grease" from restaurants into bio-diesel. Mayor Gavin Newson announced the $1.2 million pilot program, which will collect about 10,000 gallons of grease a week from city-wide restaurants. This amount of grease can be converted to about 500 gallons of fuel.

Not only will the program ensure a supply of bio-diesel for the city, but it will actually save the city money. The "brown grease" that is usually dumped down into the city drainage system ends up clogging the pipes, and costs the city about $3.5 million a year. This is more than the initial cost of the pilot program. Imagine that, a solution that is both economical and environmentally savvy!

The program takes into account the fact that there's a huge potential of energy in this resource that was previously being treated as waste. San Francisco has been converting "yellow grease", the kind used for deep frying, since 2007. They will be the first city to have a large scale program for converting "brown grease"