The WIN team is awarded the Senator John H. Chafee Conservation Leadership Award
On May 4, 2012 The Environmental Council of Rhode Island awarded the Senator John H. Chafee Conservation Leadership Award to Westerly Innovations Network. The Jr. WIN team members pose with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse at the awards ceremony.
Biodiesel Magazine shares the story of Project TGIF
Readers' Digest talks to John about Project TGIF in the February 2012 issue!
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Project TGIF Donations to Charity
Currently, we have donated a total of 14,400 gallons of BioHeat to four local charities, including the WARM Shelter, the Jonnycake Center, Mystic Area Shelter and Hospitality, and the Welcome House. This has been used to heat the homes of 144 local families. This heat has an approximate value of more than $53,000. About The ProjectProject TGIF is a student-led project where restaurants and residents recycle their waste cooking oil, it gets turned into biodiesel and is donated to charity to support families who require heating assistance. Our team is located in Westerly, RI.
The idea was first initiated after reading an article in The Westerly Sun about the WARM Shelter’s A Dollar A Week campaign to raise funds for heating assistance in Westerly, RI. At the same time, we knew of the growing problem of global warming and the emissions produced by conventional petroleum based fuels. We looked for a solution to this problem through recycling cooking oil. Some restaurants produce between 100 and 300 gallons of cooking oil per month. These restaurants then pay a company to dispose of the oil. Instead, we envisioned a system where restaurants would donate their oil to be recycled, and some of the recycled oil would be donated to the WARM Shelter for heating assistance. Our project has the goal of raising awareness about the benefits of recycling cooking oil as well as creating a sustainable system to recycle the cooking oil. We worked with Grease Co. and Newport Biodiesel to create a system where we would sign up restaurants to donate cooking oil, and they would process the oil and then donate a portion to local charitable agencies, which would distribute the oil to the families on their lists for heating assistance. Would you like to participate? Click here to Sign Up. For an overview of the project, play the video... |
