Restaurants Reluctant to Give away Used Edible Oil to Make Biodiesel

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August 28, 2019

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by Preety Acharya (Hindustan Times) Noida: Food safety department officials, who are doing a survey of district restaurants and hotels to encourage them to give away used edible oil to convert it into biodiesel, are facing trouble in convincing them to do so.

Most restaurants sell their used oil to soap making companies for ₹35-45 a litre while officials are only offering ₹20.

Officials are undertaking the survey for 10 days, between August 20 and 30, to ascertain the exact amount of used oil that can be collected from various restaurants and hotels.

According to officials, there are around 1,000 registered restaurants in the district of which around 200 fall in the higher range category. “We are reaching out to restaurants and explaining to them the importance of biodiesel for the betterment of environment. The Haryana-based company which will be converting the used oil to biodiesel is offering ₹20 per litre while the soap companies are paying around ₹35-45 per litre,” Sanjay Sharma, food safety officer, said.

On August 7, additional chief secretary Anita Bhatnagar held a meeting with all food safety officials from various districts to finalise the plan to ensure that no restaurant is reusing edible oil multiple times for frying purposes. In the meeting, all officials were asked to do a survey and ensure that restaurants give away their used oil to make biodiesel.

A plant to convert used cooking oil into biodiesel has been set up in Bawal city of Haryana. It is expected that the biodiesel manufacturing plant in Bawal will convert 100 tonnes of used cooking oil a day into biodiesel.

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According to officials, the maximum permissible limit of Total Polar Compound (TPC) in edible oil is 25%. Repeated frying changes its physio-chemical and nutrition properties which leads to the formation of TPC making it unfit for consumption. READ MORE

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