Zomato is proving itself to be both eco-friendly and conscious as proven by its next initiative. All around India a large amount of used cooking oil goes to waste which adds up to more environmental degradation. Zomato reportedly has partnered up with the biodiesel manufacturer, the BioD Energy to recycle the residual cooking oil and use the recycled product elsewhere.
As Zomato partners BioD Energy, the latter will collect the used cooking oil from restaurants and will hand it over to BioD Energy that will, in turn, sell it to oil manufacturing companies which will blend it with regular diesel.
If we are to look at the statistics, the reports given by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India indicate that India is one of the largest consumers of vegetable oil. In addition to it, India also holds the potential to convert 220 Cr liter of used cooking oil to produce biodiesel by the year 2022. With the help of the new initiative, Zomato is aiming to collect around 1000 lakh liters of UCO from the restaurants per month. Ritesh Khera, the VP of Zomato, expressed his concern at the leftover used cooking oil.
Zomato will start off its project from Delhi-NCR and will try to expand it from there. BioD will equip Zomato with special bar-coded containers for the UCO. After a substantial amount of used cooking oil has been collected, it will be handed over to BioD who will convert it to biodiesel.
The partnership comes at a time when BioD was also looking for an increase in their collection of used cooking oil. With Zomato’s help, BioD will be able to collect twice as much used cooking oil. An FSSAI report shows that 40% of vegetable oil consumed in India is used by restaurants. 30% of this used oil is brought by street vendors at a cheaper price.
However, the repeated use of oil increases the acidity of the oil and turns harmful for consumption. In August, state-run oil marketing companies IndianOil, Bharat Petroleum, and Hindustan Petroleum too launched a program to procure biodiesel made from UCO in 100 cities across the country.