For the second time this year, used cooking oil has been stolen from Jimmy’s Southside Restaurant at 340 Heights Road, this time with the value of the oil estimated at $600.
An employee of a company that buys and recycles the used oil from the restaurant, along with others in the area, reported the theft to police at 3:41 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 5. The lock to the container in back of the restaurant was cut and the used grease was removed.
The employee said other clients of his company were also seeing thefts of used oil. (It’s been an ongoing problem for years.) The employee said early morning is often the time the thefts occur.
Police asked neighboring businesses if they had seen anything unsual, but nobody had. Police have no suspects, but their investigation is continuing.
The last cooking oil theft in Darien also was at Jimmy’s Southside, six months ago, on March 5. In that theft, the lost grease was valued at $100.
In November 2016, two Yonkers, N.Y. men were arrested behind the Lithos, now a defunct restaurant next door to Darien Diner. Employees of the diner and the owner saw the men and police were notified at 6:50 a.m.
In that instance, Darienite.com reported:
Police arriving at the scene found the men with a dark blue Econoline van parked near the used cooking oil dumpster. In the van were three very large containers with used cooking oil in them (two nearly empty; the other, half full), a hose that could suck out the oil, and a gas-powered pump.
The owner said that in recent months, men in a dark blue van had been seen taking the cooking oil, and that the outdoors waste container hadn’t been filling up as much as expected. […]
Used cooking oil has been stolen from restaurants for some time now. It’s sold to companies that recycle it for bio-fuel or in some cases for animal feed, especially in Europe. The owner of Lithos told police that the restaurant has an agreement with a company to come pick it up regularly in return for the equivalent of $60 per used oil dumpster.
According to a June 2015 article in Forbes magazine, used cooking oil had become much more valuable by last year:
“As a traded commodity, used cooking oil from deep fryers (“yellow grease”) is regarded as the most sustainable types of biodiesel, and demand is surging. The unrefined, raw material alone is now referred to as “liquid gold,” fetching over $3 per gallon in New York City, when restaurant owners had to pay to have it taken away just a few years ago. Because of the rising value, theft and “black market” selling have followed […]”
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