For those of us who may not make regular trips to the Metro recycling station, it may come as a mild surprise that individuals can recycle their used cooking oil at several locations throughout the Portland metropolitan area and beyond.

Encore Oils, a subsidiary of Sequential Biofuel, collects waste oil from these locations, transporting it to Sequential’s biodiesel plant in Salem. Once delivered to Sequential, the oil is processed into biodiesel in about three weeks, then distributed to retail and commercial customers throughout the state. The technology at the Sequential’s Salem plant allows for any vegetable oil to be processed into biodiesel including soy, corn, canola and olive oil.

Encore also pays (depending on market conditions) to collect large quantities of oil from a myriad of restaurants and commercial food processors –including Kettle Foods, Shari’s restaurants, and Burgerville– all of which becomes biodiesel sold throughout Oregon. Individual public drop-offs are by donation only.

heat local, baby

I’ve been happily heating my home with Sequential’s Oregon-sourced, Oregon-refined B99 (99.9% waste oil-derived biodiesel) since upgrading to a bio-furnace in October, 2007. More than 90 percent of Sequential’s biodiesel is produced using Oregon-sourced waste vegetable oil. The remaining stock comes from Canola oil produced in Oregon, from Oregon-grown crops. Sequential’s biodiesel for home heating is available for delivery in the Portland areas from the fine folks at Star Oil.

When dropping off containers of used cooking oil at any of the locations listed below, make sure they’re clearly marked with labels stating, ‘Used Cooking Oil’ –it’s also recommended that the oil be recycled in the same container it was purchased.

The following locations are open to the public for oil drop-off –call ahead for hours:

Encore Oils
10111 NE 6th DR.
Portland, OR 97211
503.954.2154

Far West Fibers
4629 SE 17th Ave
Portland, OR

Portland Recycling Centers
2005 Rosa Parks Way
Portland, OR

Portland Recycling Centers
1520 NW Quimby
Portland, OR

Portland Recycling Centers
341 Foothills Road
Lake Oswego, OR

Metro Transfer Stations
2001 Washington Street
Oregon City, OR

Metro Transfer Stations
6161 NW 61st Avenue
Portland, OR

Salem Transfer Station
3250 Deer Park Dr SE
Salem, OR 97301
503.588.5169

Woodburn Transfer Station
17827 Whitney Lane NE
Woodburn, OR 97071
503.588.5169

SeQuential Retail Station
86714 McVay Hwy
Eugene, OR 97405
541.736.5864

Far West Fibers
6440 SE Alexander Street
Hillsboro, OR

Far West Fibers
10750 SW Denney Road
Beaverton, OR

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Living among giants and facing the effects of one of the nation’s worst economic depressions, Oregon’s Burgerville restaurants are forging ahead without fear. Always paddling against the current in the fast food burger market, Burgerville’s 39 restaurants continue to press the notion of how good fast food can taste, and how sustainable and community-focused their business model can be.

While Burgerville may lack the global heft of its larger burger-slingin’ counterparts, this lack of weight has enabled the restaurant chain to remain nimble, establishing itself as a leader in supporting local economies (and its own business) while crafting a superior menu, in both variety and taste. Their menu has always leveraged the seasonal variation of produce, using Mother Nature –instead of focus groups– to promote menu changes. This month’s seasonal menu features spinach from two local growers, Spring Hill Farms and Stahlbush Island Farms.

The organic baby spinach featured in Burgerville’s Spring Spinach and Chicken Salad comes from Spring Hill Farms, an Oregon Tilth Certified Organic farm in Albany, Oregon. The Food Alliance Certified Spinach in the Spinach Florentine Breakfast Pastry is grown by Stahlbush Island Farms in Corvallis, Oregon. Stahlbush also grows the pumpkins that Burgerville uses for the chain’s seasonal pumpkin milkshakes.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of a little Burgerville bonus when sampling one of their new spinach treats, download this coupon, which adds a free OJ or coffee to the purchase of a Spinach Florentine Breakfast Pastry.

It’s important to mention that the company’s Spring salads also use a good deal of other local and Northwest-sourced foods. The blue cheese comes from Rogue Creamery in Central Point, Oregon. The dried cranberries are locally grown and produced by Meduri Farms, in Dallas, Oregon. The red wine vinaigrette is produced by Litehouse, a family owned company in Idaho. Additionally, the Spinach Florentine Breakfast Pastry features a locally produced pastry using flour made of wheat grown and processed by Shepherds Grain, a Food Alliance Certified sustainable cooperative of wheat farms in Eastern Oregon.

Burgerville has crafted their business around a commitment to practices that buck the fast food trend. They’re striving (and for the most part succeeding) to be the leader in providing fresh, locally sourced, tasty and sustainable fast food. The company has quietly launched several initiatives that are beyond what you might expect from a fast food restaurant, including a corporate-wide purchase of wind power credits, recycling of used cooking oil into biodiesel (by SeQuential biofuels in Salem) –and most recently,  their composting and recycling program, which aims to reduce the chain’s waste sent to landfills by 85 percent. Along with composting and recycling at each restaurant, Burgerville  also developed new standards with its suppliers to improve methods for packaging and managing raw materials at the onset and in food delivery to guests with the goal that most items will never enter the waste stream.

What was initially just a “back of house” operation for kitchens and garbage areas, the composting and recycling program has recently started rolling its way into the guest dining rooms, where adoption may be a bit tougher. The next time you head to the Lloyd/Rose Quarter Burgerville, you’ll notice a series of colorful recycling and composting bins alongside greatly reduced traditional waste bins. The new bins feature colorful signage with clear instructions on how to separate your waste. It’s an important step for a fast food restaurant of any size, and hopefully a mark of changes to come for Burgerville’s far larger, anachronistic competitors.

Sustainable business practices aside, I can’t wait for next month’s seasonal surprise: asparagus.

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Last week, the Willamette Week published an interesting take on Oregon’s hybrid tax credits—which combine with existing federal tax credits to make the purchase of hybrid automobiles more attractive to shoppers. Last year alone, the state paid out more than $5 million to those applying for the credit. When the tax credit was created, the concept was to incentivize the purchase of more fuel-efficient cars, thereby cutting down on fuel consumption and associated pollution, especially in urban areas. Yes, a very good intention, indeed.

Tucked gracefully in this well-intentioned incentive are two intriguing issues: one, enviro-messaging; the other, social inequity. First and foremost, this credit is explicitly for the purchase of hybrids; it’s not a credit simply for fuel efficient vehicles or fuel efficient transportation. The message here is that hybrids are the best choice for personal transportation. As the WillyWeek references, the tax credit is readily available to anyone ‘green’ enough to chunk down the change for such planet loving steeds as the GMC Yukon hybrid SUV ($50K price and an estimated 21 mpg in the city) and the Lexus LS 600h ($100K price and an estimated 20 mpg in the city). Nope, you chumps slumpin’ down the freeway at nearly 40mpg in your $12,000 Toyota Yaris will just have to suck it. And for you schmucks silly enough to ride a bike… suck it even more.

Sure, this credit is ripe for criticism as it relates to rewarding technology as opposed to plain old efficiency, but the WillyWeek made a point to identify what I find to be the more prescient issue: social inequity. As writer Corey Pein points out, by taking mass transit (TriMet), people simply burn less fuel than individuals in cars (any car, hybrid or otherwise). Subsequently, transit riders contribute less to global warming and other auto-associated negatives (e.g., traffic congestion, street-level pollution, multi-vehicle road dynamics). Pein references a study from the highly respected Sightline Institute, which states that a mostly full transit bus is three times more efficient than a Prius with a lone driver. I’ll take it one step further: if the bus is burning Oregon-sourced and refined biodiesel from Salem’s SeQuential BioFuel, then its impact is even less.

Pein’s perspective on the state’s failure to reward the most efficient transportation is a steaming issue. I have a difficult time with this because I understand to some degree what the legislature is attempting to accomplish with this credit: make the biggest possible positive impact without asking people to shift their behavior too far. This is exactly what they did when they offered credits this past tax year to purchasers of bio-diesel for transportation (the largest sector of diesel fuel consumption). It’s worth noting that the state also offers a reduced tax credit to purchasers of bio-diesel for home heating, of which I claimed after burning through hundreds of gallons of B99 bio-diesel (from Sequential Biofuel).

Back in 1999, the legislature likely took a look at the market and said, ‘people are buying cars and they’re going to keep buying cars, no matter how much negative impact they have. So we need to figure out a way to get them to buy the most efficient cars while still getting what they want.’ Conversely, people on the bus are more likely to be riding the bus because they have to be –or in some cases choose to be because it’s the easiest or most environmentally responsible thing to do. Unfortunately, for the majority of transit riders, they’re going to ride the bus whether you incentivize their transportation choice or not. Subsequently –in the legislature’s collective mind– why waste money trying to get people to make the most efficient transportation choice (motorized or otherwise)? If you did that, you’d be handing out checks to a lot of people who made no change at all to their lifestyle –because they didn’t have a choice.

Again, I understand this line of reasoning as it relates to the legislature, but I don’t like it. If we as a collective people want our fellow citizens to make better transportation decisions, we may need to feel the pain of making the wrong choice instead of rewarding ourselves for making a slightly less destructive choice. Yes, the hybrid credit is not fair, nor does it make sense in today’s market, where gas is hovering around $4.50/gallon. But in my opinion, the credit is also rewarding the wrong thing: a purchase. I believe we need to reward behavior that benefits us all and punish behavior that hurts us all.

But that would be too simple and the problem is far too complex. What about the citizen who can’t afford to live in the city (or near a frequent-stop TriMet bus line), and subsequently lives outside of Estacada but still holds a job in Portland? What if they have a crazy work shift and simply can’t get to work on time any other way? How do we handle other social inequities and still incentivize socially responsible behavior? Hmmm… tough question. Now I see the legislature’s issue. That being said, it’s their job to tackle tough issues that affect us all and deliver solutions that produce positive environmental impact while rewarding socially responsible behavior and making those with the means to afford any choice, pay for the selfish choice. Good luck, Oregon.

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