More Businesses Turning To Waste Veggie Oil For Vehicles… and More
Editor’s Note: This is Part One in a series of articles by John Rarrick examining how small businesses are turning to Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) to tighten their belts while simultaneously reducing their carbon footprints.
Like many small business owners, Jose Duarte, Chef/Owner of Taranta, in Boston, MA, is constantly looking for ways to control costs in an economic climate that has no sympathy for the little guy. Fortunately for Duarte, discovering ways to trim his operating overhead also led to a “greening of Taranta.”
“I was looking for ways to cut our costs and I stumbled upon an article about these people running their diesel cars and trucks on fryer oil. I figured that was a good place to start,” said Duarte.
Calculating that he could save a few thousand dollars a year on the fuel costs he incurred from daily runs to his seafood vendors, Duarte turned to Boston-based Green Grease Monkey for advice on converting the restaurant’s Chevy Silverado to run on WVO.
Now he recycles not only his own grease, but that of the restaurants owned by several of his friends.
What was admittedly at first an experiment, turned into an obsession, with Duarte becoming increasingly more involved in the environmental impact of his business. After implementing a series of changes and upgrades to the restaurant, including an in-house carbonating system that enables them to make their own sparkling water supply, a recycling/composting program, and a move to utilizing more organic ingredients, Taranta received the City of Boston’s Green Business Award for 2008.
