Restaurants under the ownership of White Management are taking a much greener approach to how they do business by switching over to vegetable oil as a new fuel source for their delivery trucks. “We have spent a lot of money on just fueling the vehicle,” said Brian White, president of White Management. “We were economically forced to look at other options.” The decision to switch over to vegetable oil was born out of White’s own fascination with the practice and also the environmental benefits the company would gain from it. He said that it would also help out all the restaurants in terms of finances, as the company was spending $1,000 a month to fuel the two vehicles. It cost $4,000 to put a new system in. “We already have a payback of four to six months on a purely economic basis,” White said. “All of a sudden, you hit the six-month break even point and it is a little more bang for your buck instead of just reducing your costs.” White said the plan is to begin collecting oil from all of the restaurants and make Central Steak the main filling station for the trucks. The demand is not there yet for that much vegetable oil, but White said they plan to install an infiltration and holding system at Central Steak with a pump that would pump oil into the vehicles. This will also mean that White Management will not have to pay a nominal fee to have the vegetable oil disposed of. White said the oil will now be worth a lot more to them than the couple of dollars they used to get for disposing it. The two trucks were sent to a company called Greasecar, located in Holyoke, Mass., where White said they had a good understanding of where to install the tank and the heating unit in the van. “The mechanical trick is the veggie oil has to be at a certain temperature in order for it to flow,” White said. “The grease is not going to hold at 150 degrees, so you have to heat the veggie oil with diesel fuel and the integrated system for it to hold.” White said this new move fits into White Management’s mission to continue to go green, with an already all-green restaurant at Creo, where they used mainly compostable, low-carbon footprint items instead of using paper. “It’s one of the many initiatives we have to be a more responsible company,” White said.