Why Use Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO)?

If you're already sold on the benefits of running a diesel vehicle on vegetable oil, then I'd urge you to also consider the further benefits of using Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO).

Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) is, as the name suggest, a waste product. It's second hand, already used veg oil that is no longer suitable for its original purpose. A leftover byproduct of the catering industry, such as pubs, restaurants, chippies, hotels, chip shops, etc, WVO was in the past been considered a problem - something that needed getting rid of.

Once upon a time the unscrupulous amongst the catering industry would dump their WVO down the drains, polluting the waterways. Thankfully tighter health controls and peaked interest in WVO as a desirable product has meant that such folk either now easily give away or sell their WVO to the likes of me.

So why use WVO?

• Because if it's cleaned properly it's just as good as virgin (shop bought) veg oil.
• It's more environmentally friendly because :
  • It's the ultimate in recycling - taking a waste product using it to run a vehicle.
  • Less resources are required - instead of growing crops just to run a vehicle, a waste product can achieve the same ends.
  • Less food miles (to borrow the term) are needed as you can source WVO locally and it doesn't have to be shipped around the world a second time.
• It's cheap - nice and cheap. Virgin oil has risen dramatically in price over the passed few years, probably because demand for it has gone up thanks to people like me (what a swine I am). But even if you pay for your WVO, it shouldn't really be any more than 25% of the price of virgin oil.
• If more people use WVO, the demand for virgin oil will drop and the price may hopefully fall something like its former price (yeah, honest - when did that ever happen).
• The more that's used in motoring, the less that gets poured into landfills!
• It has the benefits as using standard virgin vegetable oil.

There are lots more advantages, but if "better for the planet" and "lighter on the wallet" don't grab you, my guess is you'll never be reading these words in the first place.