June 3, 2012:
Cooking Oil Converted Into Cash for the Chapin Food Bank
A local company is joining with the Harry Chapin Food Bank to convert cooking oil into money. The food bank can use the cash to buy commodities to feed hungry people in five Southwest Florida counties.
“This is a great way for us to really make some money during a slow time of the year. We are hoping to get $50,000 between now and December 31. With our three to one ratio, we can turn that money into $300,000 worth of food value,” said Al Brislain, director of the Chapin bank.
“We really like what the food bank does here, and we want to help in this way,” said Rick Finkbeiner, president of Green Gallon Solutions in North Fort Myers. “We are asking restaurants and hotels and any food outlet to call us, and we will bring out a new, fresh oil bin. We will then pick up the used cooking oil from that bin, bring it to our plant, and convert it to diesel fuel. We then sell the diesel to anyone who uses diesel fuel,” said Finkbeiner.
Meantime, we wondered, whatever happened to Florida Biofuels, which got $500,000 in taxpayer money through Lee County government, more than three years ago?
Turns out, that plant has yet to produce a single gallon of diesel for sale commercially. A spokeswoman told WINK News, the plant is waiting on a final permit from the city of Fort Myers and from approval by the federal government to sell diesel. It too hopes to convert used cooking oil into diesel, but it will not open until later this summer at the earliest. One commissioner who was not on the board that approved the half-million dollar grant, says it shows the problems with alternative energy.
Commissioner John Manning said, “It can be a real slow process with new kinds of energy. They have a myriad of things to go through in the permitting process. The technology sometimes is there, sometimes the technology is not there. It means, we in county government must look at these types of grants very hard, in the future.”
Restaurants and other food outlets that want to participate in the Chapin-Green Gallon alliance, can contact either to sign up for one of the new oil storage bins.
Chapin Food Bank can be reached at (239) 334-7007 and Green Gallon at 1-800-741-7380.
