CIRCLE OF LIFE

Do you remember Mufasa’s famous speech in “The Lion King,” about how the lions eat the antelopes, but then the lions die and turn into the grass that the antelopes eat? Now that’s sustainability. Unfortunately, we Americans are awfully good at breaking the circle and turning it into an arrow, as in: I buy it, I use it, I toss it.

Funny how more appropriate energy prices offer some of the incentive to reduce/reuse/recycle that politicians were too afraid to provide via higher tax rates. For example, here’s a story about stolen restaurant grease in San Francisco: ”Grease Stolen for Biofuel.”

At this point, it’s appropriate for me to give a shout-out to a colleague of mine who runs a company called Fry-O-Diesel, which produces ASTM-grade biodiesel from sewer trap grease and other waste greases. I love the concept: grease is an inevitable byproduct of cooking, so better to convert it to fuel than put it in our bodies or our landfills. After all, better circular use than the circular file.