The Upper Darby Township Police Department in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, is looking into a series of recent thefts involving used cooking oil.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one incident, men in a white truck stole waste vegetable oil from behind Wilson’s Secret Sauce barbecue restaurant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The restaurant industry refers to it as “yellow grease,” which is the used oil from deep fryers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Steve Wilson, the owner of Wilson’s Secret Sauce, said the thieves broke the container’s lock and got to work.<\/p>\n
“What they do is go around to all the different restaurants,” Wilson said. “So they’re taking $100 from here, from there.”<\/p>\n
Wilson said this has happened to him before. He said he makes 29 cents a gallon for his waste oil.<\/p>\n
Police said they’re looking into the theft, which has happened at a number of other places.<\/p>\n
If the thieves hit just a handful of restaurants, investigators said it can amount to hundreds of dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Just like, why, man? Get a job,” Wilson said. “You’re gonna get caught, you’re gonna get in trouble.”<\/p>\n
Anthony Paffas works for Lifecycle Renewables. His firm buys the waste oil, recycles it and then sells it as biofuel.<\/p>\n
“That biofuel is used in lieu of fossil fuel to heat buildings,” Paffas said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Years ago, restaurants would take their waste oil, put it outside in a 55-gallon drum and pay someone to take it away.<\/p>\n
Now, there is a market for that waste oil. It’s lucrative.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Oh, they know exactly what they’re doing,” Paffas said. “They’ll take that oil and they’ll go to a wholesaler somewhere and the guy will give them a couple of bucks a gallon. What they’re supposed to do is ask, ‘Where did you get that oil from?’ And they’re not doing that.”<\/p>\n
Wilson is hoping someone recognizes these thieves. He’s offering a generous lunch for information.<\/p>\n
“Two racks of ribs, two pounds of brisket and two pounds of pulled pork,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Upper Darby Township Police Department in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, is looking into a series of recent thefts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[212,28,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-delaware-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}