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Biofuel Thieves Steal Restaurant Grease
TMB writes "In a move that The Simpson's foretold, thieves have begun stealing inedible kitchen grease for use in biofuels. From the article: 'It's known as inedible kitchen grease, or IKG, which was once deemed waste and used in animal feed, though now is "an elixir in the booming green economy," according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. "The grease’s value as a biofuel is being increasingly recognized," the agency said last month. "IKG is now coveted, which makes it a target for theft.."
Wow, two jokes in one!
I have a 270G oil drum from when my house used to be oil heated. No longer used. Could I just dump my kitchen grease in there until it gets full? I guess it would take a few decades to get to 270G. How much does this stuff run? :)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
It's incredibly easy to convert an old VW diesel to run on kitchen grease. The trickiest part is keeping the viscosity down so you can pump it to the engine, but there's plenty of kits out there with in tank heaters for colder regions.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule.
Disturbing story on the BBC, a while back, regarding recovered grease from disposal, grease traps, drains, etc. being recycled into packaged cooking oil in China. Yum.
Where's there's opportunity, all that's needed is people with the required ethics.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What an embarrassing thing to have to admit to your cell mates...
Well, at least it's not likely to get mixed with sewage to make lard for human consumption like in China.
One hopes so, at least.
What an embarrassing thing to have to admit to your cell mates...
He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Stealing garbage." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance."
And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...Then how come the removal is classified as theft? The restaurant shows no loss (in fact it's a net gain for them as they would otherwise have to pay for disposal, per EA regulations), and the "thieves" are merely showing initiative per yet more EA regulations on RECYCLING.
Here's my theory: certain people are pissed because they're not getting their cut (the Government for fuel tax revenue, the oil companies for diesel sales (boo bloody hoo, they're getting pissy because out of their TRILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY they're losing out on two or three dozen tankfuls of diesel a YEAR!))... they should show proper initiative and ask the geniuses how they do it so efficiently instead of blowing millions in wasteful litigation!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
About seven years ago, I started making biodiesel for my commuter car, a 1984 Mercedes-Benz 300SD that I purchased for that purpose. It's not difficult to do, and when diesel fuel was costing $5/gal, I was paying about $1/gal plus my time to produce fuel that was functionally equivalent. While I got all of my IKG from local Chinese restaurants that agreed to let me take it, the online community stressed to people that IKG was the property of the collection company the moment it went into their dumpsters and that taking it was theft. It didn't seem to happen all that much back then, and competition for the IKG wasn't very high.
I stopped making the fuel about three years ago because my daily drive went from 80 miles to 16, and my diesel car died (not related to the fuel used). I now support a municipal government, and the police have mentioned that they've seen instances of IKG theft being reported locally.
(On a related note, anyone want to buy an appleseed biodiesel processor?)
Nonsense. The restaurant could have sold it at a profit. If I have some scrap metal in my garage that I plan on selling over at Crazy Ray's Junkyard, and someone steals it, it's still theft even though it was useless to me directly.
Mod parent up. Came here to say the same thing, just without the conspiracy theory =)
Have the restaurants thrown the grease away, or just put it in storage tanks? Maybe the restaurant contracts with legitimate biodiesel producers and they sell or get free removal of the grease by the production company, who then uses it to make biofuel? What you are saying is like saying "going into foreclosed houses and taking the copper wiring/piping out and selling it isn't stealing, because no one is using the house and banks are evil!" It is both morally and legally wrong.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Probably because trespassing and breaking and entering are involved, and because the restaurants are still on the hook if some chucklefuck spills fifty gallons of the stuff on the road during their getaway.
Restaurants sell it to companies that make pet food. I actually have known of people who were "grease pirates" that went around with an old pump truck stealing grease. The figure I recall was that they were making around $US 1500 a load (this was ~15 years ago).
How do you know the restaurant wasn't going to sell the grease to a legitimate biofuel maker? Just because it's sitting outside in a tank doesn't make it "fair game." A friend of mine collects fryer grease, purifies it, and sells it to larger biofuels companies. He PAYS for the grease when he picks it up from the restaurants. Taking it without paying is fucking theft.
This thing is mine. It is not yours. You have taken it from me. Theft! It's not that bloody difficult. We're not talking about online piracy. This concept has been pretty cut and dry for thousands of years.
Darling International (http://www.darlingii.com/) collects IKG from restaurants and processes it for use as animal feed as well as for other uses. Depending on the market rate, they either pay for the privilege or get paid to haul away waste. Once the oil hits their receptacles, it's their property. It's not a conspiracy, it's theft.
OWS in a nutshell.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
...they were pretty SLICK.
Yeaaaaaaaah!
Back when I was making my own fuel out of WVO (thats Waste Vegetable Oil, IKG is a new term to me), stores would GIVE US their grease for free. They were paying Rendering farms to haul it off for them. To be turned into dog food usually.
Then biofuel got big, and the renderers started to actually pay a small amount for the oil that they use to get paid to take.
Then, in CA, they got a law passed that said if you haul used veggie oil, you have to have a business license and insurance. It was a scare tactic to get the small time home brewer out of the loop, so that the renderers wouldnt have to compete with home brewers. They even got it classified as a hazardous product!
By the way, the process of turning grease into biofuel is the same as turning it into soap (aka Fight Club), its just a different ratio of the same chemicals. Some Methanol, and some Caustic lye or caustic soda, depending on what your source oil is. Shake and serve!
FTFS: it's not the restaurants that are reporting this, it's a Government Agency. If they were so hot on biodiesel as an alternative to drill diesel they'd be making it illegal to make your own and making nightly runs between restaurants and large privately owned refineries (with such original names as "Shell", "Halliburton", "BP", Texaco"...) and selling the stuff at the same price as regular. The problem for them is it's insanely easy (and relatively inexpensive) to make your own diesel, it'd be as difficult to regulate as alcohol (see: prohibition) and would likely as not spawn an underworld of diesel bootleggers armed with Thompsonsmaybe.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
A lot of indie "hipster" bands have biodiesel vans for touring.
The smart ones arrange in advance to pick up some from restaurants, since it's not really in the restaurant's best interest to sell the stuff.
Some band called OFF! got busted for it a couple months ago. http://www.punknews.org/article/42020
Long before kitchen grease was used for biofuel, it was and still is used to make soap.
35 years ago when I started working in the restaurant business, the grease had always
been collected in a barrel out back when it was time to change the fryers. and about once
a month a company would collect the contents of the barrel to go towards the production of soap.
Been that way for the last 35 years.
madness. He should *charge* the restaurant a small amount to take it away for recycling.
I always wondered when this would actually begin to happen.
"Och! Me retirement grease!"
Even garbage is private property.
I know a guy who has a VW TDI converted into a grease engine. He's banned from every Wal-Mart in America because he worked out some arrangement with the McDonald's manager (inside the Wal-Mart) to get enough old vegetable oil to keep his car on the road. Some security guard at Wal-Mart saw him taking the oil out of the waste container in the back and disapproved. I think the McDonald's manager got in trouble for it as well.
Now I think he gets his fuel from Rallys or Wendy's or some place like that. But he doesn't really steal it because he asks for it, first. The companies pay to have the stuff disposed of so usually the managers usually don't mind.
I have a TDI for my winter car (summer car is a mid-engine, rwd), but I haven't converted it because 1) filtering the IKG is a pain in the ass 2) it makes your car perpetually smell like fast food 3) it can be high maintenance and 4) driving a diesel around is cheap as hell anyway (40-45mpg on a 15 yr old car!).
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Heh, next thing you know the cops are going to crack down on bums for dumpster diving.
And to all those who have responded to your post with "what if the restaurants sell this stuff?" - they're wrong. The restaurants, like you said, pay to have it removed.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
If the government didn't depend so much on fuel taxes, they wouldn't care so much about bootlegging.
A mileage-based tax based on the weight of the vehicle would also solve the problem that a 2-ton car causes 16 times as much road wear per mile as a 1-ton car, but only pays about twice as much in fuel taxes.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
madness. He should *charge* the restaurant a small amount to take it away for recycling.
That doesn't work when there's someone in the area who is willing to pay for it. This isn't hypothetical, people do pay for it.
FTFS: it's not the restaurants that are reporting this, it's a Government Agency
Yes the issue of a broad theft problem is being reported by a GA, and the GA is talking about taking action, but the GA wouldn't know about the problem unless it was reported by the independent restaurants first.
The implication that the restaurants don't care, only the government and its oil lobbyists care, is completely unfounded.
Oh, and also wrong according to TFA:
NPR blogger Nancy Shute reports on how restaurants and recyclers are now putting barrels of so-called yellow grease under lock and key because, as the National Renderers Association told her, it has become "the new copper."
I guess you were under the impression that only the government and the thieves, not the restaurants, knew that IKG could be valuable?
The enemies of Democracy are
The restaurants sell the used oil to legitimate companies that collect it. It has been this way since 1979 that I personally know of. Stealing is theft.
Long before kitchen grease was used for biofuel, it was and still is used to make soap.
35 years ago when I started working in the restaurant business, the grease had always
been collected in a barrel out back when it was time to change the fryers. and about once
a month a company would collect the contents of the barrel to go towards the production of soap.
Been that way for the last 35 years.
When I first read the above, I was horrified. Then I realized that it actually said soap, not soup like my mind substituted.
Got Apathy?
What an embarrassing thing to have to admit to your cell mates...
He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Stealing garbage." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance."
And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
Was the grease stolen from Alice's restaurant, noting that Alice's Restaurant is not the actual name of the restaurant?
If a restaurant has a choice between you requiring them to pay for grease removal, and a rival company paying them for the grease, I'm betting that they will choose the more profitable option every time.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
In most places it's not. I can legally go riffle through your garbage once you put it out for collection. Private business on the other hand you might not be able too. I'm not sure exactly what makes it legal for someone to riffle through my garbage, but not theirs (if that is the case).
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
People have varying views of rubbish disposal.
In Argentina before they had the crash that the west is about to have rubbish was viewed this way.
But after the 2002 financial crash so many people were destitute that an army of people was born and found searching the dustbins primarily for cardboard.
Now the crash is past this group of people seemingly come out of nowhere at night and clean up the streets. Now people just through rubbish out wherever and there is hardly any governement provided collection. Compare this with western Europe where everything is a cost and a problem to dispose of, so much that people dump it anywhere.
I always suggest working with the market rather than fighting against it. If there is a problem then attempt to steer the market flow rather than trying to make water go uphill.
In this example people who wish to securely transfer ownership to a disposal company should state thier intentions and those collecting otherwise protected by default.
This is the kind of lesson that this economic disaster will tell whether we like it or not.
A blog I run for the wealth
If it was MY grease- and it was suddenly of some value, I'd happily SELL it to someone. I'd be pissed if someone was stealing something of mine.
Tell that to various municipalities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Once a garbage and/or recycling bin is placed at the curb, the respective city claims ownership. Anyone riffling through and removing items could be charged with theft.
What I want to know is if I roll the recycling bin out to the curb and later roll it back to the house before pickup, am I stealing?
I don't know how the law would apply here (IANAL) but if you put out trash for collection, you give up rights to it. Could be the same for grease put out for collection or it might be different.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
That I thought I read about 3 years ago
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/us/30grease.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2008/0506/p01s03-usgn.html
http://blog.oregonlive.com/nwheadlines/2008/05/restaurant_kitchen_grease_thef.html
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/articles/2884/california-cop-is-arrested-for-grease-theft/
And last year
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-09-29-restaurant-grease-thieves_N.htm
But apparently has been around much longer, maybe even before the Simpsons episode (1998)
http://www.salon.com/2000/11/06/grease_wars/
A mileage-based tax
I'm pretty sure I could disconnect my odometer.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You're taking someone else's product/intellectual property with online (or offline) piracy too.
It's just one anecdote vs. another, but this reply says his friend DOES pay the restaurants for the stuff:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2517652&cid=38006318
I work in a restaurant. I owned one for a while, too. I can tell you, there are those that want the stuff. The company I had taking mine away, at first, charged me to do so. Another company approached and said they'd charge less, they got into a bidding war with each other. Ended up having it done for free. At the time, I believe it was going into C4 production. Now, at the restaurant I work at, the gentlemen who delivers our mushrooms takes it, and actually PAYS us for it (in the form of an extra box of mushrooms; product we'd use anyway). They use it to keep their 'cave' system at ideal temps, we get free product and free removal of something we have no use for. Win/Win.
The "Simpsons" were not prophetic because this has been a problem for the past 20 years. Where have you guys been?
Cranky educator.
I guess that when people are stealing the stuff, that makes it officially valuable. To borrow an old meme: will 2011 be the year of biofuels in the fuel tank?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The current plans in some places is to use a GPS logger.
Dilbert RSS feed
Once the grease is put in the render's container, it's their property and they will defend it; the restaurant that generated the waste grease probably doesn't care. It's the grease rendering company that being stolen from, not the restaurant.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Nope, you still have it. Besides, I didn't take it, some nice person shared it with me.
Dilbert RSS feed
The grease isn't put out, it's in a container owned by the rendering company leased to the restaurant on the restaurant's premises.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I was making Biodiesel back in 1996 when Josh Tickell was driving his Veggie Van across the country making big news. Frankly that was the death knell for us as individuals who made their own BioDiesel. I went for years without ever buying a bit of fuel for my car. All the restaraunt folks called me MacGyver and marvelled at my Diesel Mercedes that smelled like french fries. Once BioDiesel caught on as a commercial idea, the recyclers that used to charge the restaraunts for taking the grease started paying for it and locking the restaraunts into "Contracts", and putting locks on the grease containers. It is now a crime to take any grease from a "Griffin Industries" grease tank (the major recycler here in Tennessee), and because of the contracts, the restaraunt can't even give it to you before they put it in the tanks. The contracts are worded such that once the grease comes out of the fryer, it is the property of the recycler. Once something becomes commercially viable, the individual is screwed. I ended up selling my fuel proccessor and getting out of it because I couldn't get any waste oil/grease. The recyclers pay way more for it in order to discourage us from buying it directly from the restaraunts, at least they did back when I was doing it. It may be different now that have run us all out of making our own fuel. In addition, the price of the chemicals went through the roof as well so now your cheaper off to buy dino-diesel, at least if you were doing it for cost reasons. Back in the 90's I was making a 50 gallon batch of BioDiesel for about 50 cents a gallon. Whats happening now I suppose is that some of my brethren are taking it from the grease tanks at restaraunts. Of course now the recyclers can burn you at the stake for that since they can nail you for larceny, transporting biowaste, etc. And they will nail every one they catch to the wall just to make an example of them because they know that there is a lot of us out there. I saw the writing on the wall and refocused my energies towards electric vehicles, solar, geothermal etc. At thats not against the law... Yet....
I remember reading about this in the papers...
So I make my engine spark plugs just a weee bit loose to make a nice interfering spark gap emitter.
Or just make the entire car a faraday cage.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Wrong. I think you are confusing two things. Once you put your garbage out for collection it is no longer considered private, so someone can indeed look through it. However, it is still either yours or the collection companies property, and taking it without permission is theft.
In Canada, restaurants pay people to take this away, and they give it to people who will use it for biofuel :P
No, I'm not wrong. In several places (most) it's considered abandoned property once it's set outside for the trash collectors to pick it up.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
This isn't exactly new. Theft of waste oil has been happening for years...
Probably, but it's not as easy as it used to be.
At least according to my friend who leases cars, and recently got stuck being unable to game/cheat the system.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
...to drive-by liposuction.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Oh come on. This has been going on for ages here in Europe.
AFAIK, in the UK for example it is *not* abandoned legally if you've specifically put it out to be collected (and especially IMHO if it's still on my land). It might be abandoned in law if you fly-tipped it.
And if not abandoned, taking it without permission is theft.
IANAL
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
A couple of decades ago, we would collect and sell the grease from the deepfryers - if it was worth money back then, and useful as fuel today, I'm pretty sure its STILL worth money.
> In a move that The Simpson's foretold,
The Simpson's what?
If in doubt, leave it out.
It could work.
There's a sweet spot somewhere, where the costs work out such that the market value of the good is so low that you still would pay someone to take it away.
Let's say it costs me $10 to collect a tonne of grease, $10 to process it into biofuel, which I can sell for £20. I've not made a profit. If I also charge $10 for collecting the grease, I've made $10 profit.
My competitor in the grease disposal business, who doesn't sell biofuel, has to charge $20 collection, to make the same profit. (and that's discounting his disposal costs)
Rolling them back is difficult, since they are tamper-resistant. But disconnecting them from the little plastic gear in the transmission is easy - or at least it was easy the last time I had to change out the gear when my tire size changed.
That's the thing - even just increasing your tire size without changing out the gear would cheat the system. Conversely, you could put the wrong size gear in there purposely to give yourself a discount on taxes. Yeah, your speedo would be inaccurate by xx%, but cruise control would still work and you could easily figure out where the new 60MPH was by timing mile markers.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If people can chip an XBox for a hundred bucks, I'm pretty sure any monitoring device will have a whole cottage industry spring up around it. Giving people financial advantages like this is asking for trouble.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I wonder if liposuction clinics are next to get hit. At least in the US, the emissions would still probably smell like french fries.
In many jurisdictions the mileage is recorded at vehicle inspection. Showing 0 miles in the year or having no odometer is going to raise an awfully big red flag under a mileage-based tax system.
We'll let the Star Chamber figure that one out.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
or - find out what the local council charges for industrial waste collection, then offer to subcontract directly to them for slightly less, and include the recycling feature "for free".
Excepting Alice...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
They'd be very interested in knowing why your GPS log nothing (as opposed to logging the same position, as it would happen if the car was parked). My bet is that you'd pay a hefty fine if they inspected your car and discovered that.
Dilbert RSS feed
Three points:
1. A cottage industry of odometer tamperers would spring up - they could just set the odo to whatever you want for a nice discount. If they can mod an XBox, they can probably work something out for the "tamper-proof" odometers.
2. You can change the gear ratio at the transmission such that the speedo still works, but gives you significantly fewer miles - if you use a ratio that is about 2/3 you can save 1/3 on taxes and the speedometer is still usable because you can use the kilometer markings as miles. Even if they somehow make that tamper-proof, you can always just put bigger diameter tires on your car for a discount.
3. You can always just disconnect the odo for half the year - perhaps at every oil change you can alternate it.
I think that automatic toll collection is probably the way forward. Easy to catch non-payers and spot checking for spoofed RFID transmitters is easy as well (if such a thing were to become a problem) - just cross-check either the license plate or the VIN, or make it a standard thing to check during traffic stops with a receiver in the cop car.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
madness. He should *charge* the restaurant a small amount to take it away for recycling.
he could... but unfortunately it's apparently valuable enough that people think it's worth stealing. Something that restaurants use to pay to have removed is now worth going to jail for, I imagine restaurants across the country will be looking at their oil grease in a different light now.
My question was what was the value of what was stolen? Since inedible kitchen grease (IKG) is usually disposed of, what value is placed on it? According to the article it's worth 40 cents a pound and a gallon of grease weights 7.68 lbs which means it's worth $3.07 a gallon. That seems incredibly high considering diesel fuel isn't much higher than that and this grease still requires a lot of filtering to remove the impurities and processing with chemicals to make it ready for a diesel engine to use. Filtering might remove some of the weight since many things fall in grease traps that isn't grease so 10 lbs of IKG might be closer to about 9 lbs of useable oil, making the price per gallon even higher. 100% biodiesel also gets 10% less mpg
If biodiesel costs almost the same as diesel fuel but gets worse mpg then whats the point?
a new way to dispose of toxic waste. Just put it in with the waste grease and wait for it to disappear. Then it's someone else's problem :-)
Yeah, your speedo would be inaccurate by xx%, but cruise control would still work and you could easily figure out where the new 60MPH was by timing mile markers.
Those radar displays they put by the road sometimes would be a great help for this. It's how I realized that my speedometer was reading high by several mph at ~50. No tire size changes; as I understand it they err on the side of overstating your speed.
The enemies of Democracy are
Taking it without paying is fucking theft.
How come the dumbfucks around here seem to think that doesn't apply when it comes to illegal filesharing?
And this, kids, is why energy economies based on waste oils do not scale well.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Around here (Lincoln, Nebraska) scrap metal is around $200.00 a ton. Unless you do scrapping full time, it's not worth the time and effort to take your 100 pounds of scrap in.. set it by the curb and let the scrappers come by and haul it away.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Umm, no. They couldn't do SHIT about it. See, there's ZERO law or regulation stating I can't do that. Making my car a dead zone isn't illegal. I am free to allow or prevent signals coming from my property or coming into my property (if I were not allowed to, it would be illegal to remove my factory-installed car radio, as an example.) Until there is a court ruling WITH JURISDICTION that states otherwise, your assertion is incorrect.
Do you even know what a Faraday cage is, or how one would be constructed? A car frame can make a pretty good one with just a couple of adjustments.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Cartoneros" go around collecting what they deem salvageable, but in the process they rip every single bag of trash open, rummage and then go away. The wind picks up whatever they leave and plays around with it.
This turns many of buenos aires' streets into spontaneous wind tunnels with used diapers and other nasty crap as markers.
It is not nice or green or anything. It's filthy as fuck, and rats love it. Government doesn't do shit of course, solving that is not stealing and hence not in their job description.
there's ZERO law or regulation stating I can't do that
For now. There's also zero law or regulation saying you have to keep a GPS logger in your car. It's a proposal, for now.
I am free to allow or prevent signals coming from my property or coming into my property (if I were not allowed to, it would be illegal to remove my factory-installed car radio, as an example.)
That makes no sense. Removing your car radio doesn't prevent the signal from coming into your property.
Until there is a court ruling WITH JURISDICTION that states otherwise, your assertion is incorrect.
My assertion can't be incorrect, because it was an opinion ("my bet is..."), not a fact.
Do you even know what a Faraday cage is, or how on would be constructed?
Yes.
If you want to know more about the current plans, check out Oregon's HR-3311, the "Road User Fee Pilot Project".
Dilbert RSS feed
Have the restaurants thrown the grease away, or just put it in storage tanks? Maybe the restaurant contracts with legitimate biodiesel producers and they sell or get free removal of the grease by the production company, who then uses it to make biofuel? What you are saying is like saying "going into foreclosed houses and taking the copper wiring/piping out and selling it isn't stealing, because no one is using the house and banks are evil!" It is both morally and legally wrong.
There really isn't much difference between a storage tank and a trash can. I have both green and a blue storage tanks that I leave out on my curb every Thursday. If someone 'stole' their contents, I certainly wouldn't want any of my tax dollars being used to investigate, prosecute, or jail the 'thieves'. Your analogy is flawed. The copper wiring and pipes in a home serve a function in the home which is degraded when they are removed. The IKG left in 'storage tanks' is a _waste_ product that serves the restaurant no other function, much like the waste that I leave in my 'storage tanks'.
If anything, the thieves are probably guilty of TRESPASSING but it otherwise doesn't make sense that one can STEAL something that another DISCARDS. As long as the 'thieves' didn't break into the restaurant in such a manner as to preempt that restaurant's discarding of the IKG, I don't see how one can consider them to be thieves.
How DARE you take stuff that I... threw AWAY???
What sense does that make?
How do you know the restaurant wasn't going to sell the grease to a legitimate biofuel maker? Just because it's sitting outside in a tank doesn't make it "fair game." A friend of mine collects fryer grease, purifies it, and sells it to larger biofuels companies. He PAYS for the grease when he picks it up from the restaurants. Taking it without paying is fucking theft.
If the container was marked "WASTE" and placed in a waste disposal area, I'd say it was fair game. If the restaurant was going to sell the grease to a legitimate biofuel maker, it wouldn't be _waste_ and wouldn't be in a container marked as such. If McDonald's sold you a hamburger in a container marked "waste" you'd be foolish to buy it. When I lived in an apartment complex, people would often leave furniture and electronics outside at our trash compactor/electric waste disposal unit. As that on occasion some of the stuff was nice (eye of the beholder) I had no problem believing that some of it might be rescued from destruction and collection. However let us get to the nitty gritty:
How many of your tax dollars do you want to waste going after these 'thieves'? How many do you want to waste prosecuting and jailing them? Misdemeanor or Felony offense?
On my car if I start it while holding down the trip reset button, I can get a digital MPH display on my tripometer.
It always read a few MPH slower than my needle, so I suspect that is true.
Also, there's an Android app Speed View that uses GPS, and can be set to a mirror image to project an HUD onto your windshield at night (my dash uses a glowing background, and it's dead, It'd be very expensive to fix, but I can read the digital readout, as it's a separate back-lite, and the HUD works fine too). Also, I can see 3000 RPM, and know what speed that is for each gear.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg