Unintended consequences - Biodiesel and grease theft

From the New York Times:

As Oil Prices Soar, Restaurant Grease Thefts Rise
The bandit pulled his truck to the back of a Burger King in Northern California one afternoon last month armed with a hose and a tank. After rummaging around assorted restaurant rubbish, he dunked a tube into a smelly storage bin and, the police said, vacuumed out about 300 gallons of grease.

The man was caught before he could slip away. In his truck, the police found 2,500 gallons of used fryer grease, indicating that the Burger King had not been his first fast-food craving of the day.

Outside Seattle, cooking oil rustling has become such a problem that the owners of the Olympia Pizza and Pasta Restaurant in Arlington, Wash., are considering using a surveillance camera to keep watch on its 50-gallon grease barrel. Nick Damianidis, an owner, said the barrel had been hit seven or eight times since last summer by siphoners who strike in the night.

�Fryer grease has become gold,� Mr. Damianidis said. �And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away.�

And here is why:

In 2000, yellow grease was trading for 7.6 cents per pound. On Thursday, its price was about 33 cents a pound, or almost $2.50 a gallon. (That would make the 2,500-gallon haul in the Burger King case worth more than $6,000.)

The people making Griesel on their own have been sliding under the RADAR for the least fifteen years or so. As the article said, restaurants were paying people to get rid of their grease and there was no environmentally good way to recycle it except to turn it into fuel. These people are also not paying any of the federal highway taxes that are levied on fuel used for motor vehicles and trucks. Now, with the burgeoning bio-fuel business, grease is now a valuable feedstock and worth quite a bit. The homemade fuel people will find it harder and harder to get free or cheap feedstock. I would imagine that rural restaurants would still be a good source as the commercal buyers of grease will not want to drive that far. Still, if the home manufacturer has to burn ten gallons of finished product just to gather fifty gallons of raw material, this turns things around a bit... Hat tip to Maggie's Farm for the link.