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Restaurateur gives cooking oil new life
Too much cooking oil isn't just bad for your arteries, it's also bad for the planet.
Thanks to restaurateurs like Ronald Yoong of South Surrey, cooking oil is being recycled into renewable energy such as biodiesel, which has 80 per cent fewer carbon emissions than regular diesel.
Yoong, the owner of Penang Szechwan Cuisine on Johnston Road, is a Restaurant Green Zone member. With his membership, he has access to ERM BioSource, a Lower Mainland company that picks up his used cooking oil from a green bin at the back of his dining establishment.
The local eatery is one of 700 Lower Mainland restaurants that have taken part in the pilot project, which pays businesses between five and seven cents a litre for the oil (must be vegetable-based only), and processes anywhere from 75,000 to 150,000 litres a month.
Yoong has been doing it for almost three years already, and says it's an extra step he's more than happy to take to help protect the environment.
"I know that if I want my kids to have a good future, I have to do what I can now to protect the Earth. Recycling cooking oil is safe... people can use it for their cars."
Going one step further, Yoong has also volunteered to allow residents to dispose of their UCO at his business establishment.
But protecting the environment doesn't just stop at work for Yoong.
At home, he helps his two daughters to recycle the family's reusables and biodegradable products.
"They know that if they just throw these things away, they'll end up in our landfills," he says.
