Elizabeth’s Hospitality Law Blog / by Elizabeth Ardanowski

Who would have thought a few years ago that your restaurant waste products would be the target of thieves?  First, you had to worry about thieves stealing copper wires from your light poles and air conditioning units. Now, with the increasing popularity of eco- and bio- everything and the dreadful cost of fueling our cars, thieves are cashing in on used grease and cooking oil, known as “yellow grease” in the commodities markets.  Yes, your restaurant waste is becoming a lucrative business.  With the new opportunity for profit, thieves are bound to notice.

Yellow grease has increased in trading price from around 7.5 cents per pound in 2000 to 33.5 to 34 cents per pound as of June 5, 2008.  That is a staggering increase of over four hundred percent in less than ten years. The idea of using cooking oil as fuel has been around a long time, but petroleum fuels were traditionally cheap and plentiful, so the petroleum market took off.  With the high costs of fuel now, however, companies are jumping on the bandwagon to find alternatives, preferrably alternatives that are friendly to our environment.  Waste companies are also benefitting from a new market niche - a reclamation market - that sees the waste as a good thing. 

Interestingly a legal trend is developing where thieves are getting away with their crimes – juries in Texas have been finding that trash is trash.  Once you put it out for the trash, anyone can pick it up.  While some companies still provide barrels for the used oil and grease that are easy targets for thieves, some now allow restaurants to pump oil from fryers directly to insulated tanks, which saves strain on employees having to haul the oil, prevents thieves from stealing your barrels, and saves your restaurant from having to pay to have the grease and oil hauled away.

While theft is certainly not a good thing for any business owner, the ability to turn a waste product into an aid to your bottom line is a good thing.  Now if only the wasted paper products could become profitable . . .