Biofuel Oasis: Empowering Alternative Fuel Use
Running your car on biodiesel fuel is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint. BioFuel Oasis, a women’s collective/owned business in Berkeley, offers not only fuel, but a level of expertise and service you haven’t experienced in a fuel transaction in years.
Biodiesel is made from vegetable oil, normally from soybeans. You can grow the beans to produce the oil, but the most environmentally conscious way is to use recycled oil from restaurants. Because diesel engines have much higher compression than gas engines, they can burn a range of fuels, including the stuff they use to cook French fries.
- » See also: Biofuels Breakthrough: Making Fuel From Air With Engineered Microbes
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Vision of a better way.
In 2003, Jennifer Radtke and a partner had a vision of creating a place where customers could obtain pure, 100 percent biodiesel (B100) in a healthy environment. By the end of the year, they had secured a 1,000-foot warehouse space in a light industrial zone in West Berkeley. They began dispensing fuel in five-gallon portable containers (carboys), and after nearly a year of building permit negotiations, opened their first pump.
Originally a partnership, the business became a worker-owned cooperative when three more women joined in 2005. Worker-owners spend about 80 hours a month at the station and have hands-on experience with everything to do with running a vehicle on biodiesel.
With success from their hard work, the business outgrew its location. So, this spring, it moved to a prime location on Ashby Avenue at the corner of Sacramento. The worker/owners assembled a team and totally remodeled the classic 1933 fuel station that was there, poured new concrete, and installed two fine new pumps. Above them are gorgeous trellises, made from recycled wood, that hold solar panels to provide electricity for the pumps.
Unlike today’s faceless corporate gas stations, where bored clerks sit amidst the air fresheners, cigarettes and junk food while you pump your own gas, the BioFuel Oasis is oriented towards healthful living. You can learn about not only biodiesel but also urban gardening, chicken ranching and alternative ways of travel, including bicycling and walking.
When I visited, I saw beekeeping supplies, a salt lick, racks of books and information, T-shirts, and much more. Moe Beitiks, who was working the shift that afternoon, handed me a copy of Not a Gas Station, a book by cofounder Radtke about the founding of the business. A good read, it also includes helpful information on establishing and running your own biodiesel station.
Sounds like a good place to bypass - the hippy stop.
The advantages listed you really believe?
Hey, I think it’s great. They recognized a service that wasn’t being fulfilled and built a business around it. Win/win.
Whether or not recycling used cooking oil is the best approach to solving our dependency on petrol doesn’t refute the fact that someone out there is at least typing something, and it’s solution which seems to have no negative and only positive results.
Anything can happen I suppose - maybe one day the fast food industry will go belly-up and take a big chuck out of this biofueler’s resource pool, or maybe science will find the holy grail of renewable energy. In the meantime, this isn’t a bad work-around, I think.
Whether or not recycling used cooking oil is the best approach to solving our dependency on petrol doesn’t refute the fact that someone out there is at least typing something…
Oops! I mean, trying something. I’m the one typing something (poorly). (-:
This sounds fantastic. I hope these entrepreneurs continue on this trend, and would like to congratulate them on their success.
@russ- Yeah, I hate it when people try to break the mold and test-run a new way of doing business.
All the advantages listed there are backed by scientific research. It’s all been posted about before: http://gas2.org/2008/04/10/biodiesel-mythbuster-20-twenty-two-biodiesel-myths-dispelled/