Who doesn’t love fried chicken, sweet and sour pork, or any other dishes that use a lot of vegetable oil to cook? But have you ever wondered what happens to the used oil afterward, we know it’s discarded (rhetorical question), either down the sink drain by some (bad idea) or put into a container to be dumped in the garbage, also not such a great idea.
Although the used oil should be properly disposed of, we know that that is not the case probably about almost 100% of the time. We should rethink this used oil waste resource and really recycle it instead.
As gas price continues to rise and our daily living is heavily dependent on fuel consumption the used cooking oil could be recycled to be an alternative fuel to power cars, and other types of engine or even used to make special shingles for homes that can save on your heating costs. The use of this oil waste resource is only limited by our imagination.
However, getting a large volume of used cooking oil can be problematic as there are many companies out there competing for the same resource and there are only so many restaurants. Economically it is hard to have a business plan that would make it profitable to collect and recycle this used oil waste resource.
Yet there are many apartments and condos in Toronto and the GTA that can dramatically increase the amount of supply. What these condos and apartments property managers have to do is supply their buildings with used cooking oil containers that residents can go and dump their oil in. Now it can be as simple as a steel drum for easy pick up or a little more pricey like the ones used by major restaurants and hotels. The choice would be up to the management team of that particular building as budget is always a concern.
So by introducing more supply to the market, there could potentially be an industry based on this used oil waste resource. We can even expand this program to residential homes as well by providing them with smaller drums or other types of containers that they can easily put out for collection. Again we just increased the supply of this used oil waste resource and we made it even more lucrative for entrepreneurial companies to develop this market.
If we care about the environment and want to diversify our energy supply this is surely one way we can accomplish this and in the process create jobs as well. Think about it!
