Driving on Waste Vegetable Oil

While in Hawaii, it's not unusual to find us positioned strategically beneath an umbrella at the Tropics Beach Bar and Cafe, located along a relatively uncrowded stretch of Waikiki Beach on the island of Oahu. One of many restaurant, café, and deli opportunities found at the expansive 22 acre Hilton Hawaiian Village, this dining experience at Tropics shares a commonality with the other eateries on-site, as well as those elsewhere on the island: waste vegetable oil (WVO).

WVO exists because of the french fries at the next table, the onion rings across town, and the fish-and-chips at restaurants along the North Shore. While mahi-mahi and pulled pork may be the order of the day at many Hawaiian venues, there's also a proliferation of places - from Cheeseburgers of Waikiki to the Hard Rock Cafe Honolulu - that serve up fries in great numbers. There's no denying that food fried in vegetable oil is all around in paradise, just as it is on the mainland.

That culinary thread is both a blessing and a curse. Its primary drawback is, of course, that WVO is a waste product that shouldn't - and in fact often legally can't - be disposed of in landfills. WVO has an odor that attracts animals and worse, it's flammable and has caused landfill fires, thus it's a real hazard.

The blessing is that WVO can also be a fuel. Plenty of people over the years have collected used cooking oil from their hometown restaurants to fuel older diesel passenger cars or trucks. On a larger scale this can be done with WVO that's collected regularly from restaurants and processed commercially to meet exacting fuel specifications, then dispensed at conventional fueling station pumps or sold to fleets in drums.

Daydreaming about biodiesel over a mahi-mahi sandwich isn't nearly as productive as diving in and gaining personal experience. So, it was off to the Honolulu Ferry Terminal to catch the Hawaii SuperFerry to Kahului, Maui, the center of the biodiesel universe in the islands. The trip over in Hawaii SuperFerry's ship, the catamaran-style Alakai, takes just three hours.

In a way, this experience brings to mind the trips we often take on the mainland via Amtrak whenever longer-distance rail travel seems more efficient than going by highway in one of our favorite vehicles. The high-speed ferry - which can carry up to 800 passengers and 200 vehicles between islands - offers a lot more than your average Amtrak train, though, with big-screen TVs, movies, business-class style seating, and the Hahalua Lounge (at a $20 upgrade). Pretty terrific views of the sea and the islands of Molokai and Lanai come as a matter of course along the way. Given a choice of air travel between islands and the SuperFerry, we'll take the SuperFerry option every time.

We didn't transport a vehicle on this trip, but instead arranged to pick up a biodiesel-powered VW Jetta from Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars upon arrival in Maui. The Bio-Beetle location is an easy 5 to 10 minute walk from the Kahului Ferry Terminal, or an even shorter drive if curbside pick-up is desired from the terminal, a cruise ship, or the Maui Kahului airport. At this rental company, drivers can select from VW Beetle, Jetta, and Golf models or even a Jeep Liberty CRD, all running on recycled vegetable oil. Costs begin at $49 per day or $229 to $349 per week, excluding the cost of biodiesel fuel, to make one of these eco-positive vehicles your vacation ride.

A quick heads-up: If you're expecting a highly-polished operation, be aware that Bio-Beetle is a bit more grass-roots, with its rental headquarters a small structure in an industrial area near the port, about a half-mile from where we disembarked the SuperFerry. Many Bio-Beetle rental vehicles are several years old but all are in good shape and quite mechanically sound. The focus here is on environmental performance rather than luxury, and functionality instead of just style. If you are environmentally inclined and want your vacation driving to reflect your values, then these idiosyncrasies aren't likely to matter.

Proprietors Shaun Stenshol and his partner Pam Wolf walk the environmental walk. Shaun owns Maui Recycling and the two are always looking for ways to make Maui more self-sustaining. Promoting the use of renewable biodiesel through Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars is an outgrowth of this effort.

Since they live on the island, these two also understand what brings tourists to their home. A sports rack came on our biodiesel VW Jetta and a boogie board was offered as a matter of course, along with the requisite maps to guide one to all the wonderful sights and activities that Maui offers. And activities here are legendary, from driving the winding 54 mile Road to Hana and visiting mystical Haleakala Volcanoes National Park to simply enjoying the multitude of watersports available all over the island.

Accommodations are plentiful on Maui and range from the basic to the ultra-luxury. Our choice was the Hyatt Regency Maui, a spacious resort located on 40 beachfront acres at Kaanapali Beach near the town of Lahaina and about a 30 minute drive from Kahului. Of course, while in Lahaina we had to experience some of the very products that would, in future weeks, contribute to the stocks of WVO that promised to power the very vehicle we were driving, but at the hands of different eco-conscious drivers. Yes, trips to Hard Rock Cafe Maui and Cheeseburgers in Paradise were in order and fries come standard with the meals ordered.

Driving the roads on Maui present ideal conditions for taking in spectacular scenery while experiencing the thrill of sustainable travel. As we've noted in the past, driving a diesel car on quality biodiesel fuel is an absolutely seamless experience, with no difference in power, overall performance, or visceral cues. The engine doesn't know it's running on a soybean-based biofuel or, in our case, vegetable oil that once brought french fries to a golden brown. Thus, our drive of this five-speed VW Jetta was no different than that of a diesel Jetta driving on conventional diesel we had the opportunity to experience several years back.

As our time on Maui drew to a close, we headed back on the Honoapi'ilani Highway through Lahaina, following Highways 380 and then 30 to our refueling opportunity at Pacific Biodiesel's facility in Kahului. Here, refueling with WVO biodiesel was available for $3.99 a gallon, some 28 to 60 cents less per gallon than conventional diesel sold at other Maui stations. And this illustrates a new fact of life not only for biodiesel, but alternative fuels in general: times are a-changing.

The economic hurdles that have historically faced higher-priced alternative fuels are fading away as gasoline and diesel prices have climbed to historic, and most likely, sustained heights. While the price of a gallon of gasoline or diesel will vary over time, it's not expected they will ever return to the levels of the past. This means that price parity for alternative fuels like biodiesel is at hand.

All things being equal, given a choice between renewable biofuels and the petroleum fuels we've depended upon for over a century - fuels that come in large measure far from our shores and at great cost to our economy - consumers will turn to cleaner alternative fuels in increasing numbers. Participating in the process while in paradise is a bonus, for sure.