Newspaper Page Text
Student
recycles
used oil
By BRIANA GERDEMAN
The Red & Black
Eric Goodman will make the
trip from Athens to Jacksonville,
Fla., for the Georgia-Florida
game this October.
But he won’t spend a penny
on gas.
Goodman's truck runs on
cooking oil, which he gets for
free from restaurants and busi
nesses. Now, Goodman has cre
ated a business based on col
lecting and recycling used cook
ing oil.
It started this summer, when
Goodman’s uncle gave
Goodman a vehicle that runs
on cooking oil and contacts
with three restaurants willing
to donate used cooking oil.
Goodman, a business man
agement major, discovered
there was a demand for grease
collection. On June 1, he found
ed Premier Grease.
So far, Goodman, a senior
from Marietta, has expanded
his collecting from three res
taurants to 34.
Goodman collects used
cooking oil from restaurants,
apartment complexes, Greek
houses and private residences.
He picks up the oil in one of
his two trucks, which both run
using cooking oil. He takes the
collected oil home, where he
purifies it to remove food debris
and water.
After the oil is purified, 60 to
70 percent is used to run his
vvwwTheCapitalßoom.com
riMT m kn n m
nCfIPITJII MOM
|V||4 t‘ tf <|| ink'
~
./ I\\ ■
( "X >
'X ' 1)
%
SEPTEMBER,2BTH, 2010
* TATE THEATER,® 7:3OPM
TBumß rrTnTl F1( - EE FO H.STUDENTS ——
I HUBS J 5 foR NON-STUDENTS
WANNA BE A PART OP OUR TEAM? VISIT US AT
WWW.UGA.EDU/UNION OR ON TWITTER BUGAUNION!
* MP- 7$ 11 i WBk* I** 1 **
IM 1 __ .. W
Cot'RTttY or Rue Goodman
▲ Premier Grease, a student-run company, collects and
recycles cooking oil from local restaurants and houses.
The oil is used in trucks or sold to an outside company.
trucks and collect more oil.
Goodman sells the remainder
to a company that converts the
oil into biodiesel.
Goodman also picks up
empty cooking oil containers
and pays to recycle those. He
hopes the business will help
emphasize alternative forms of
energy.
“The whole thing started in
reaction to the gulf crisis
let’s reduce our dependence on
oil,” he said.
Although the company is
still young, Goodman said he
has an advantage over the com
petition.
“First of all. they love the
fact that I’m a college kid doing
NEWS
this,” he said. “They love the
fact that I use the grease direct
ly in my cars. Another thing is,
basically I’m the only one in
town, so they don't have to wait
weeks to get grease collected.”
Graze, anew restaurant
serving burgers and salads, is
one of Premier Grease’s clients.
Owner Brian Chelchowski
described the service as a “win
win situation.”
“I love it. I think it's a cool
idea, and being a restaurant
owner, I need someone to pick
up my grease,” he said. “I kind
of wish I had a truck that ran
off grease, just because it’s
great for the environment and
it’s cheap.”
featuring: /
introducing Nathan Shepard
adult uuim!
Every Thursday Saturday from 10pm -11 pm
fISIMM
$T )l) Well drinks
$1 jU Domestic beers
$2 00 House wines l
$2 50 Grand Marnier & Cazadores Tequila \
247 East Washington St\
The Red a Buck | Monday, September 27, aoio
University researcher
predicts extinction rate
By JULIA CARPENTER
Thk Rkd & Black
It sounds like something out of
a science fiction movie, but it’s
not happening on the moon it’s
happening right here at the
University.
John Drake, a University asso
ciate professor of ecology, and
Blaine Griffen, assistant profes
sor of biological sciences and
marine sciences at the University
of South Carolina, have
researched a mathematical for
mula that predicts how and when
a particular species may go
extinct.
Their findings are soon to be
published in Nature, one of the
most prestigious scientific
research journals in the country.
Drake and Griffen experiment
ed with populations of water
fleas, replicating their ecosystems
within a lab and observing the
gradual termination.
“We’ve examined several things
that affect a population’s extinc
tion risk, including things like
migration rate,” Griffen said.
“We’ve examined factors that
inhibit a population’s ability to
grow or the size it can achieve
which, both of those things, influ
ence extinction risk. Once a pop
ulation is headed towards extinc
tion, we’ve examined scaling rules
to predict how long it will take.”
The key finding is a "critical
slowing down” of certain popula
tions. Drake said that as environ
ments change, populations may
exhibit unexpected “tipping
points,” and with the onset of a
critical slowing down, popula
tions take much longer to recover
from even the smallest hiccup
and researchers can determine
from there how close a group is. to
extinction.
“When a system’s resilience is
lost, this critical slowing down
can interact with other fluctua
tions iii the system to give you
subtle statistical signals, and
these are the things we studied in
our paper,” Drake said. “These
early warning signals that can tell
you you are in the vicinity of a
bifurcation or a tipping point.”
Tierney O’Sullivan, a Junior
biology and ecology mqjor from
Roswell and a student worker in
Drake’s lab, said that the research
gave her an opportunity to see
classroom extinction lectures in
action.
“In class you
learn the theory,
but this is a lot
more hands-on,”
she said. “It’s pret
ty exciting to be
able to do this as
an undergrad, and
Dr. Drake is a real
ly good adviser
and mentor for us.
Drake said his
research uses a wide range of
methods to better understand
the results as well as of the
research produced.
Drake said he anticipates that
his findings may be controversial
within the scientific community.
“I don’t think there’s any ques
tion about the evidence that we
procured, but there are unan
swered questions about how use
ful this is in conservation,” he
said. “We need more research to
answer that question, and also
how widespread these right kinds
of bifurcations are in nature.”
3
DRAKE