Food Initiatives

Reusing cooking oil

The food sercive on the University Campus filters cooking oil to extend its useful the life, thereby reducing the overall usage by 35 percent, saving some 6,000 gallons of oil a year from the previous process.When the oil can no longer be used for cooking, it is collected by a firm that provides rendering and grease removal services across the country. The oil is transported to the company’s northeast facility in Billerica, Massachusetts, where it is processed for reuse. Most of the cooking oil is recycled into yellow grease, a product used as a high energy ingredient in animal feed.

Yellow grease is also used to produce biodiesel, a non-toxic biodegradable diesel fuel substitute. According to industry sources, when used in place of petroleum, or in blends with petroleum, biodiesel can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 78 percent.