Used kitchen grease is thieves' latest target

San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate.com ^ | Friday, March 16, 2012 | Ellen Huet

[thecodont]

Slick-fingered Bay Area thieves are stealing restaurants' used kitchen grease, a product that six years ago was so worthless that some restaurant owners would illegally dump it down the drain instead of paying for proper disposal.

The leftover cooking oil, yellow grease, is the easiest material to turn into biodiesel. And as the alternative fuel's popularity has increased, so has its selling price, making it a target for thieves willing to go through the trouble of pumping or siphoning the grease out of storage barrels.

"It's liquid gold," said Daniel Rugg, director of engineering at the Four Seasons hotel in East Palo Alto, where security guards frequently chase away would-be grease thieves.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/15/BA051NFA8F.DTL#ixzz1pMBYFUuU

[thecodont]

First copper wire and scrap metal,

then Tide detergent,

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2859093/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2858466/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2858121/posts

and now this?

[El Gato]

Tide and kitchen grease?

They're making Napalm!

[2ndDivisionVet]

[Mark]

Pond scum President needs this stuff.

[JudgemAll]

Oh man, I did not know Michelle was packing liquid gold... tsk tsk tsk

[Oztrich Boy]

"The Simpsons already did it!". (In 1998)

[Figure11]

Not Willy’s retirement grease!!!!

[martin_fierro]

[ansel12]

Isn’t this the same old story we have been reading for about 15 years, or almost that long?

[PghBaldy]

Is this another example of the rotten economy that Obama has burdened us with? People don’t steal things like this unless things are messed up.

[DaveA37]

Nothing new. Country folks been using used cooking oil for a long time for diesel fuel. Does cause a bit of problem though when fuel lines get plugged due to poor/improper filtering. (French fries and onion rings get stuck) but the exhaust fumes do smell good though.......

[DaveA37]

Nothing new. Country folks been using used cooking oil for a long time for diesel fuel. Does cause a bit of problem though when fuel lines get plugged due to poor/improper filtering. (French fries and onion rings get stuck) but the exhaust fumes do smell good though.......

[Former MSM Viewer]

.

[Wurlitzer]

Some 440 VAC electric fencing will take care of these bottom feeders of society but some liberal freaken lawyer will threaten to sue if someone who has no business being someplace gets hurt. We are always put in a position of being hamstrung by criminals and lawyers.

I want some cleansing of the gene pool.

[hinckley buzzard]

I remember as a child in the early fifties, my mother always had a coffee can on the stove where she would pour excess fat from the frying pan. No longer for turn in, but "waste not--want not," used it instead of store-bought lard. Old habits die hard.

If this country had half the sense it used to have, this "stealing" would be unnecessary, as it would have been folded into the free market, like other successful recycling and scavenging.

[El Gato]

We cook our bacon in the microwave. But we do save the grease for fried eggs, mixed with some coconut oil, yea coconut oil, it makes great fried eggs.