Every commercial kitchen in New York produces a resource, and where that resource ends up ranges from genuinely useful to genuinely expensive. The worst outcome is a fatberg. The best one is heat in the building next door.
The worst case has a price tag
The Department of Environmental Protection runs 7,500 miles of sewers moving 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater a day to 14 treatment plants. Fat is one of its most persistent operating costs. DEP has reported that grease accumulation causes roughly 60 percent of sewer backups citywide, and that the agency spends close to $19 million a year clearing clogged sewers and repairing damaged equipment.
That cost does not stay at the agency. DEP has put the price of repairing building plumbing damaged by grease and wipes at more than $10,000 for a property owner. If your building has a commercial kitchen in it, you also carry direct exposure under the city’s grease interceptor rules, where the maximum penalty currently runs to $10,000 per day, per violation.
A fatberg is what happens when a usable commodity is treated as waste. It is the least valuable possible destination for a gallon of cooking oil, and New York pays for it twice.
Most of what gets recovered leaves
The better outcome is that the oil gets collected. But collection is only the first decision. The second one is where it goes, and most of it goes a long way.
Used cooking oil is now a globally traded feedstock, pulled hard by aviation and road fuel mandates in Europe and elsewhere. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that the United States exported about 20 percent of its renewable diesel and other biofuels production in the second half of 2025, with roughly half going to Canada and about a third to the Netherlands.
None of that is improper. It is simply a long supply chain. The oil leaves a kitchen in the Bronx, gets processed, and ends up in a fuel tank on another continent, while the building that produced it keeps burning fossil heating oil.
Every rung of that ladder is better than the one below it. Our argument is simply that the top rung exists and is available in New York today.
What the loop looks like right now
Lifecycle Renewables operates both ends of it. We collect used cooking oil from hundreds of New York City restaurants across the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, and move millions of gallons a year through two facilities serving the city, in Newark, New Jersey and in the Bronx. It comes back as Truburn®, a 100 percent renewable heating oil.
That is what a circular economy looks like when it is not a slogan. The collection, the processing, and the combustion all happen inside one metropolitan area. The waste stream and the fuel supply are the same stream, and the distance between them is a truck ride across the Harlem River.
Why this counts as infrastructure
Consider what the loop does not require. No new pipe. No new right of way. No public capital. It runs on assets New York already has: existing commercial kitchens, existing tank storage, existing oil-ready boilers, existing delivery routes.
And unlike the systems it relieves, it regenerates. A pipeline depletes what it carries. A grid has to be built. This one refills every day the city eats dinner.
Two bills, one fix
Buildings already heating with oil are best positioned, because Truburn® is a drop-in replacement for conventional #2 heating oil. There is a permitting step, and it is a light one. Compare it to converting to natural gas, which means securing gas service, replacing combustion equipment, and a full capital project on top of the approvals. Switching to Truburn® means an approval and a fuel delivery, and the fuel costs about the same as what you buy today.
The emissions case follows from the same fact. Truburn® delivers a 93 percent lifecycle greenhouse gas reduction against fossil heating oil per New York City’s evaluation, with 74 percent counted under Local Law 97. Compliance progress out of a fuel change rather than an equipment replacement.
New York already produces the resource. The only real question is whether the city gets the benefit of it.
Come See Truburn® Live — Schedule Your Tour
Want to see Truburn® in action? We invite NYC building owners and managers to tour an active Truburn®-powered building in Manhattan and see firsthand how easy the transition is.
Get in touch with Lifecycle Renewables:
- 📞 Call us: 888-461-9831
- 📧 Email: truburn@lifecyclerenewables.com
- 🌐 Website: truburnfuel.com
Sources & References
1. NYC Department of Environmental Protection, “Trash It. Don’t Flush It.” nyc.gov
2. NYC DEP press release 19-008, February 21, 2019. nyc.gov
3. NYC DEP, “Disposing of Grease as a Business,” 15 RCNY §19-11 and penalty provisions. nyc.gov
4. NYC DEP, grease accumulation responsible for 60 percent of citywide sewer backups. a860-gpp.nyc.gov
5. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “One-fifth of U.S. renewable diesel and SAF production was exported in 2H25,” May 2026. eia.gov
6. Lifecycle Renewables Newark supplier tracing record, 2026 year to date. Internal.
