Biofuel Thieves? (Score 5, Interesting)

I was making Biodiesel back in 1996 when Josh Tickell was driving his Veggie Van across the country making big news. Frankly that was the death knell for us as individuals who made their own BioDiesel. I went for years without ever buying a bit of fuel for my car. All the restaraunt folks called me MacGyver and marvelled at my Diesel Mercedes that smelled like french fries. Once BioDiesel caught on as a commercial idea, the recyclers that used to charge the restaraunts for taking the grease started paying for it and locking the restaraunts into "Contracts", and putting locks on the grease containers. It is now a crime to take any grease from a "Griffin Industries" grease tank (the major recycler here in Tennessee), and because of the contracts, the restaraunt can't even give it to you before they put it in the tanks. The contracts are worded such that once the grease comes out of the fryer, it is the property of the recycler. Once something becomes commercially viable, the individual is screwed. I ended up selling my fuel proccessor and getting out of it because I couldn't get any waste oil/grease. The recyclers pay way more for it in order to discourage us from buying it directly from the restaraunts, at least they did back when I was doing it. It may be different now that have run us all out of making our own fuel. In addition, the price of the chemicals went through the roof as well so now your cheaper off to buy dino-diesel, at least if you were doing it for cost reasons. Back in the 90's I was making a 50 gallon batch of BioDiesel for about 50 cents a gallon. Whats happening now I suppose is that some of my brethren are taking it from the grease tanks at restaraunts. Of course now the recyclers can burn you at the stake for that since they can nail you for larceny, transporting biowaste, etc. And they will nail every one they catch to the wall just to make an example of them because they know that there is a lot of us out there. I saw the writing on the wall and refocused my energies towards electric vehicles, solar, geothermal etc. At thats not against the law... Yet....