Crooks Are After the Grease From Your French Fries
- Yellow grease prices jump 230% since 2000 as refiners buy more
- Black market growing, and more thefts expected in warm weather
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The prize for the caper was more than a ton of used restaurant grease. Two men busted by police near a strip-mall dumpster in Knoxville, Tennessee, were seen March 2 siphoning the gooey waste into barrels on their truck. In the weeks before then, 44 similar thefts had been reported.
Stealing old vegetable oil that’s been used to cook chicken nuggets and french fries sounds a little gross. But a black market for the golden gunk is growing as U.S. refiners process record amounts of grease to comply with government mandates for renewable fuels. Last year, 1.4 billion pounds (635,000 metric tons) were turned into biodiesel -- or 3.84 million pounds a day.