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Thoth
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Ottawa, Canada
Dec 2000
time: 00:24
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The Ottawa Sun
quote:
Fri, June 4, 2004
Just veg out to beat high gas costs
By AP
WESTON, CONN. -- As car owners grapple with pumped-up gas prices, some are turning to their favourite restaurants for a solution: Recycled vegetable oil. Environmentalists with diesel cars have used vegetable oil for years as an alternative fuel to cut back on sooty emissions, but as gas prices soar to more than $2 a gallon, they say their "veggie cars" are a great way to save cash.
More than $2 US a gallon works out to about 53cents a litre, or about 72cents Cdn a litre.
'ZIP AROUND TOWN'
Every two weeks, Etta Kantor drives to a local Chinese restaurant to fuel her blue Volkswagen Jetta. She calls ahead and the owner puts aside a few buckets of used oil for her. At home, Kantor uses a colander and a bag filter to remove water and any food particles.
The vegetable oil is then poured into a 56-litre tank in the back of her Jetta, where a spare tire would usually be kept.
With a touch of a button located above the radio, Kantor can switch from diesel fuel to vegetable oil in seconds.
"Oh, I zip around town, go fast on highways. It's not any different," said Kantor, 58, of Weston.
Restaurants that would have to pay to get rid of their old vegetable oil are happy to give it away for free. "It saves us a couple of dollars and it helps to save the environment a bit so I thought, 'Why not?' " said Shawn Reilly, a co-owner of Eli's On Whitney, a restaurant in Hamden.
Reilly estimates it costs as much as $60 a month to have the oil removed otherwise.
Bridgeport resident Aaron Schlechter says he picks up about 110 or 150 litres twice a month from Eli's.
He uses it to fuel his car for his 270-km commute every day to his job as an environmental consultant in Staten Island, N.Y.
BUYING IN BULK
"The only way that I can assuage my guilt by driving this awful distance is by driving something that isn't consuming fossil fuels and has much more environmentally friendly emissions," Schlechter said.
Vegetable oil is becoming so popular that a Massachusetts company called Greasecar is buying it in bulk from a distributor and selling it to local customers.
It's priced at about 24cents a litre, said company founder Justin Carven.
Since 2001, Greasecar has also been selling conversion kits, like the one in Kantor's car, that allow diesel cars to run on the recycled oil.
About 200 kits were sold in the past year, Carven said. A standard conversion kit sells for $800 at Greasecar.
"Once you install it, though, you are saving hundreds and hundreds of dollars," Carven said. "The product usually pays for itself within the first year." |
Veggie Gas Homepage
I'm not sure if this has been posted already, but a search of the forums came up empty.
I like the idea of low emmision fuels.
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13-02-2005 19:09
That is a little surreal. 
Fossil-fuel oil isn't getting any cheaper.
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