Lyle Estill

Not long after arriving in North Carolina, I became enamored with that exotic Southern delicacy: deep-fried turkey. Each time I fried a bird, however, I was left with gallons of used cooking oil. The recycler in me found it hard to throw such waste in the woods, so in 2002 I began brewing it into homemade biodiesel. At first, my friends and family found it “quirky.”

Biodiesel is rather easy to make. You start with a toxic noxious fossil fuel product – methanol – and you blend it with lye to make a caustic mixture, which is similar to furniture stripper. You then takethat concoction and blend it with liquid fat, and if you have the recipe right, biodiesel is born.