‘Ebay’ for Recycled Oil Readies for October Launch

StayGreen Oil, an online market place for used petroleum and plant-based oils, has so far collected over 3,000 gallons prior to a planned public launch in October.

The web site, which allows buyers and sellers to interact through public auctions or via private requests for proposal, has been operating in a beta phase since August.

The company says its web site is the world’s first online marketplace for recycled oils.

SGO’s platform includes a dashboard with a predictive analysis tool so users can forecast future revenues or supply. Members can also build specific reports by customer, product, date, and location, the company says. There are no membership fees for using the service – instead, SGO makes money by collecting a fee from each transaction carried out through the website.

“Oil does not wear out… it just gets dirty,” the company says on its website.

At press time used motor oil on the site was trading at $0.92 a gallon, and used cooking oil was trading at $0.41 a gallon.

In August Whole Foods Market announced that it is now powering its North Atlantic kitchen facility using recycled waste cooking oil from its stores.

The facility’s on-site generator, which is owned and operated by Massachusetts-based Lifecycle Renewables Inc., produces power using a fuel called LR100, which is 100 percent hyper-refined waste cooking oil collected from the commissary itself, from 28 Whole Foods locations in the North Atlantic region and from a number of other Boston-area restaurants and cooking facilities.

In April, Quantas flew Australia’s first commercial flights powered by a blend of converted cooking oil and conventional jet fuel. The aircraft uses the 50-50 mix in one of its two engines. Qantas engineers are monitoring the engine running on both standard aviation fuel and biofuel.

In December last year, the US Navy placed an order for 425,000 gallons of biofuel from Dynamic Fuels LLC – a joint venture between Tyson Foods Inc. and Syntroleum Corporation – and bioproducts company Solazyme Inc. Dynamic supplied fuel derived from used cooking oil, while Solazyme fuel comes from algae.