05/01/2008 (Philippine Daily Inquirer) - Soaring oil prices that hit a grim $100 per barrel in the world market is a wake-up call for us to develop alternative, clean and renewable sources of fuel.

We can address this problem by recycling used vegetable cooking oil. Tons of waste cooking oil indiscriminately discarded by households, hotels, restaurants, fast-food chains and eateries pollute the environment, particularly our drainage and water systems, rivers, lakes and seas.

Such unwanted oil is now being converted into a fuel for motor vehicles. One enterprise in Japan doing this is the Someya Shoten Group of Sumida, Tokyo. Used oil from restaurants are collected and recycled into Vegetable Diesel Fuel (VDF). VDF gives off no sulfur oxides and less than one-third of the black smoke emitted by gasoline.

Resourceful as we are here in the Philippines, we can do this by collecting and paying for used vegetable cooking oil from hotels and restaurants by drums; and per “balde,” or kerosene can, from every household like “kanin baboy” or pig slop for recycling into VDF.