This past holiday season marked San Francisco’s annual fuel drive, where residents can bring in their used cooking oil to be recycled into biodiesel for the municipality's fleet of vehicles. No results have been posted yet on how much cooking oil the city collected, but the trend has been positive. From Dec. 26 through Dec. 30, residents could drop off their oil at specific Whole Foods and Costco locations around the city. The only requirement was that the kitchen grease had to be stored in leak-proof containers. The city also ran similar programs after Thanksgiving in 2007 and 2008 which yielded 1 and 2 tons of turkey grease respectively.

Grease is a big problem, and not just for the landfills where much of it still gets dumped. In San Francisco each year, 65,000 gallons of grease end up in the sewers and the results are disastrous. Grease hardens in sewers and gets stuck there – in fact, half of all the city's sewer emergencies are caused by grease. “It's hard as a rock,” said Tyrone Jue, a spokesman for the city's public utilities commission. “It's sort of like what happens with grease in your arteries.”

The cost of fixing damaged pipes sucks $3.5 million a year out of the city's budget. In economic times of these, when municipal funds are struggling enough as it is, it would be a shame to spend so much money on a problem that is completely avoidable.

In addition to the grease collecting program, the city is trying to find other ways to cut down on the amount of food ooze going down the drain. About one out of every five of the city's 500 restaurants have signed up for free grease pick up from the city. San Francisco takes the grease it collects to a treatment facility where any food remnant is removed and then the oil is further refined in a biodiesel manufacturing plant before being pumped back into the fuel tanks of municipal vehicles. More information of the city's grease recycling program can be found here at www.greasecycle.org.

If this latest food fuel drive is successful, the city is looking at running the program 365 days a year.

Via The San Francisco Chronicle

The Coast Guard in Japan, like other public services from every country feeling the economic crunch, is being told to lower expenses. How do you rescue drowning people on the cheap? In the seaside towns of Takamatsu and Wakamatsu, the Coast Guard offices have taken an idea from high school students that lowers the cost of flotation devices while helping the environment.

A few years ago, a group of high school students on a field trip to the sea came across a drowning man. The quick-thinking students improvised a flotation device using 16 plastic bottles and rescued the man. Though the invention was invented out of necessity, the Coast Guard realized that it was effective.

Each of these red lifesavers made from recycled polyethlene bottles cost about $2. That's a significant savings for the Coast Guard which used to spend $50 to $200 for new official flotation devices. The Coast Guard plans to have the bottles at piers and breakwater lights on rocky shores near fishing ports at the door of lighthouses. The Coast Guard also has step-by-step instructions here on how to make your own flotation devices out of plastic bottles here, but you have to be able to read Japanese.

Photo credit: Wakamatsu Coast Guard
Via: InventorSpot