Monday, June 28, 2010

How To Make Your Car Smell Like French Fries

An article in today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette details a partnership that GTECH Strategies (Growth Through Energy and Community Health), a CMU-Heinz College social innovation spinoff and Echoing Green Fellowship winner, has with Pittsburgh-based  Optimus Technologies / Fossil Free Fuels to collect used cooking oil from local restaurants and other institutions for use in vehicles with converted diesel engines.  By their estimates, Pittsburgh generates an estimated 500,000 gallons of cooking oil annually, much of which is dumped in landfills or literally down the drain, causing not only environmental issues but an economic liability for companies.

GTECH has been filling brownfields with sunflowers for the past three years with the dual purposes of environmental remediation and economic development, and their efforts have expanded to areas including post-Katrina New Orleans.  The partners have already secured $650,000 in grants this year to collect and convert vegetable oil, to convert engines and to build two alternative fueling stations.  

As Andrew Butcher, CEO of GTECH and a Heinz College alum put it:

"This is a sweet spot for GTECH -- the economic potential in eliminating an environmental liability."

They are also working on a $1.6 million expansion plan that would generate 2.5 million gallons of renewable fuels per year and includes converting a block of abandoned buildings in Braddock (an economically distressed area of the city) for a vehicle conversion garage, fueling station, processing and distribution facility, and research lab for cooking and seed oil fuels.

I think this effort highlights some of the characteristics of next generation social innovation ventures--multidisciplinary, multipurpose, scalable, leveraged by strategic partnerships, and, perhaps most importantly, with a business plan that recognizes financial sustainability as a critical success factor.

What do you think?  

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