We have known about it for years. In fact, we have been making it for years. What is it? Biofuels. In the morning’s wee hours, trucks make stops at restaurants to collect their previous days’ plate waste of fats and oils, a.k.a. grease. It is then stored, collected in larger quantities and rendered into biofuels and animal feed. I had heard of it and think it is a way of somehow contributing to modernizing the meat industry’s contribution to climate improvement.

How much biofuel is really made from such grease and does it make much of a difference? Is the exhaust belched from such biofuel-energized vehicles any different than that from conventional fossil fuel-derived diesel? And what about the cost to produce biodiesel versus fossil-derived diesel? Answers to these questions below.

In this time of COVID-induced stay-at-home orders, few restaurants are open for business so any research must either find data from pre-COVID times or extrapolate current plate waste collection. Whatever our industry can do to counter the negative effects of climate change, even in some small way, is a marketing success compared to all the pessimistic information spewed forth about our meat’s toxic effect on mankind’s body and environment.

Here’s the fuel biology behind using grease. Such diesel biofuels, now christened as biodiesel, are produced through a process called transesterification (whew, more than a mouthful). Most U.S. biodiesel production uses raw vegetable oils, used cooking oils, yellow grease and animal fats as feedstocks for transesterification. A prime source for this biodiesel includes waste animal fats from processing plants, used/recycled cooking oils and yellow grease from restaurants. And that’s where we come in.

In 2019, worldwide biofuel production reached 43 billion gallons, up 6% from 2018, and provided 3% of the world’s fuels for road transport. The U.S. consumed about 1.8 billion gallons or 4% of the world’s production nearly all as blends with petroleum diesel. (Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration) The International Energy Agency’s goal is for biofuels to meet more than a quarter of the world demand for transportation fuels by 2050 to reduce the dependency on fossil-derived petroleum. Not an immodest goal, but it is a start.

In the December 4, 2020, edition of The New York Times, “Oil Companies Smell Profit in Restaurant Grease,” reported that renewable diesel produces between 50% and 80% less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional diesel, depending on which raw materials are used to make the fuel.

Is it more costly to produce biodiesel from grease than fossil-derived diesel? Yes, as the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, in a May 2003 study, estimated that biodiesel was 27 cents/liter or $1/gallon more expensive. And that was including a contributory carbon tax credit and reduction of pollution costs. Volume-induced production efficiencies since 2003 may have lowered this differential.

How can the meat industry contribute? In my view, there are two ways. First, by providing the raw material — i.e. fats and grease — and second, using the resultant biodiesel in the meat industries’ transportation fleets.

We are already supplying the raw material but receiving little applause for doing so. Maybe we shouldn’t look for credit, but instead simply continue to make a ready supply available to grow the manufacture of biodiesel. How simple is it to encourage restaurants to contribute their waste grease to the collection process? How simple is it for our beef fabrication plants to collect, store and provide/sell the fat that falls to our production floors to those who can use it to make an environmentally friendly fuel? The answer to both questions is, “easy.”

We must enhance the availability of the biodiesel “raw material” we think of as a waste that can be processed into a usable fuel and then unabashedly tout the fact that we are doing so. That’s really a marketing story and one from which we shouldn’t shy away.

But, if we are going to talk the talk, then we have got to walk the walk. By that I mean that our industry should wholeheartedly embrace the use of biodiesel in our transportation fleets and anywhere else we can efficaciously use such fuels.

Biodiesel production and use is another win-win for our industry and the environment.

“Grease is the Word” — Barry Gibb

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