You're right, it seems like there are a lot of restaurants interested in donating waste vegetable oil to people interested in converting it to biofuels. I am a way bigger fan of using a waste product to make fuel than converting raw materials into biofuels.
Biofuels present a great opportunity for corporations and big organizations to reuse a waste product themselves. For example, I read that McDonalds was using waste vegetable oil to fuel some of its trucks in the UK (see article: http://www.off-grid.net/2007/07/02/mcdonalds-switch-to-
used-cooking-oil/)
It seems like a great way for other businesses or restaurants who use diesel to reuse a waste product to meet their needs.
It's a great opportunity for universities as well. On my campus we have eight dining halls that all produce waste vegetable oil. There are some students who are currently working to set up a system so that our campus shuttles can run on biodiesel made from this waste vegetable oil.
Everyone at the University has agreed that it is a good project, but it has taken some time to get the infrastructure in place. It will take up space to convert the waste vegetable oil into fuel and then it will take more space to store it. Also, given the cold winters in Chicago, they have to be careful that the biodiesel fuel doesn't start to congeal, especially inside vehicles. Hopefully, once issues like this get worked out, it will become a more viable option for the future.

Why allocate resources that are unnecessary or a water/energy hog. Corn/oats use less water to grow than rice. And why use resources to grow livestock when you can just go vegetarian and use the energy more wisely and feed more people. Why produce less food just because we are all energy hogs.

wow that's really cool that students at your school are working on getting the vans to run on leftover vegetable oil and that the administration and everyone is buying into it.
good luck with this project it sounds fun but a lot of hard work.

I came across an article which offers another perspective to alternative energy. The Mother Jones article "Small Town America's Green Lifeline" explains how in some cases the alternative energy sector has offered struggling rural towns jobs and a future. The issue seems more complicated than the brief overview that the article offers, but it looks promising from the information available in the article.

This is a really neat article. I think that renewable energy development is a great way to create jobs as well as creating environmental change.

I guess I'm still not sure that ethanol really is a renewable resource...Ethanol production and even industrial corn growth is very energy intensive, especially as many of our fertilizers are petroleum based.

I really liked the different technologies that this article talked about- using turkey manure and other waste products. I think that's fantastic and I hope we will continue to find ways to turn our wastes into useful products.

Biofuel only shifts the environmental consequences from petroleum extraction to those caused by large-scale agricultural practices.

Where are we proposing get all the extra farmland if we will rely on agriculture for both food and energy needs.