“This huge vehicle was taking us around down the icy street on French fry grease — I was pretty amazed. And yes, it really did smell like fries!”
-Reporter and Producer Catherine Komp
Hi, this is Aaron Henkin, curator of the NPR Station Showcase with PRX podcast. Each week, I get the chance to shine a spotlight on a stand-out radio story, a piece that’s been produced locally, at one of the hundreds of public stations around the country. This week we head northeast to central New York, where WAER broadcasts its signal to Syracuse and the surrounding areas of Binghamton, Utica, and Auburn. In the cold of winter last January, producer Catherine Komp put together a story for WAER about bio-diesel fuel — at the time, a local mother-daughter team was about to take off on a road trip together in a bus powered by restaurant grease. Here’s a short Q & A with Catherine Komp about her experience putting this story together…
How did you cross paths with the Syracuse Alternative Fuel Co-op and get inspired to make this story?
I met Becky Johnson when she was vending her wares at a holiday craft fair in Syracuse and I was doing some Christmas shopping. She was selling her book, /Wicked Cool Sustainable Solutions For The Earth: An Activity and Coloring Book for Little and Big People. /We started talking and I learned about her grease bus project and that the vehicle was just weeks away from its first test drive. The potential radio story alarms and whistles started going off, I got Becky’s number and soon after I was invited to the first meeting of the Syracuse alternative fuel co-op.
A few minutes into your story, we’re introduced to ‘Gretta the Grease Beast,’ a 15-passenger van that’s been modified to run on bio-diesel fuel — did you get a chance to ride in this thing, and what were your impressions of it?
I did get a chance to ride in “Gretta the Grease Beast” and it was a really great experience, despite waiting in the bus for 30-minutes in the freezing Syracuse cold before the grease was warmed up enough to drive (one of the downsides of owning a grease car in frigid climates). The bus itself was fairly unassuming, like a medical transport vehicle but painted blue and green with the words “veggie-powered bus” stenciled on the side. The idea of running a car on alternative fuel seemed pretty straight-forward to me, especially as I did some research years back on people in the South Pacific who distilled coconut milk to fuel their vehicles. But when we started driving around and I processed what was happening — that this huge vehicle was taking us around down the icy street on French fry grease — I was pretty amazed. And yes, it really did smell like fries!
I wonder, did the co-op members tell you any stories about where they got their bio-diesel fuel from?
This was an interesting part of the grease car community that I didn’t have a chance to go into in my story. There’s definitely a code of ethics. People got their grease from restaurants’ trash bins, for free, but there was strong agreement among co-op members that you should also develop a relationship with the owners first, ask their permission and explain what you’re doing with the grease. There was also discussion about creating grease car flyers translated into different languages for restaurant owners who didn’t speak English very well. One predicament discussed at the meeting I attended was where would the co-op hold all the grease, especially for owners of vehicles that didn’t have a grease filtering system built directly inside it. Apartment-dwellers might want to wait until they have a house with a garage and a yard before trying to build and maintain their own grease car.
Becky’s mom is an interesting cultural counterpart to the young biodiesel advocate’s vigilance — does it seem to you like there’s an expanding market for biodiesel vehicles? Are the grease-fuel conversion kits getting more consumer-friendly, so that they might appeal to Becky’s mom’s demographic? Or do you think these cars are destined to be a novelty item — more a political statement than a viable alternative mode of transportation?
That’s a great question. I think that for those committed to the idea, no lack of automotive skills will stop them from converting their cars. In fact, there were only a couple of “gear heads” at the alternative fuel co-op meeting I attended; the others were resourceful types who seemed to know where to find help if they needed it. Though the co-op members were ecologically-minded people interested in reducing their use of fossil fuels, the rising price of gas might drive others to investigate as well. From my own research, the conversion process doesn’t seem difficult at all and some of the kits sold are designed as “do-it-yourself” projects (although you do need a diesel car for it to work). But I think a bigger, looming question — and one Becky Johnson raised at the end of the radio piece — is how big can the alternative fuel community get before it’s not sustainable anymore. Is there enough restaurant grease to power millions of cars? If the concept caught on, how soon would we reach the peak grease production?
There’s lots of other information here: www.greasecar.com
…Catherine Komp is a former news producer and reporter for WAER. She’s currently a staff reporter for the NewStandard. Komp produced the story “Grease my Ride” for WAER in January of 2005, and you can hear other stories from WAER online at The Public Radio Exchange. That’s where producers from around the world share their work. Write your own reviews and help influence what ends up on the radio at www.prx.org.
hi this is lauren I am a student that is studying about the grease car i think that what you did was very cool. thanks for helping our enviroment!