New company turning grease to fuel

Bridgeport, Conn. (WTNH) - A new company in Bridgeport is turning waste into fuel, as part of a greater effort by the city to bring in more green businesses.

City and state leaders gathered for the new plant's ribbon cutting ceremony Monday. Bridgeport Biodiesel will take waste material from local restaurants and recycle it into renewable fuel.

"This is a pretty incredible thing to have taken a waste product, restaurant grease, and produced a fuel that we're all going to be able to use that's cleaner than the alternatives," said Dan Esty, DEEP Commissioner.

The fats, oils and greases that used to be thrown out are now being recycled into energy, which can help heat homes and fuel the city's buses and trucks.

"We are Bridgeport Biodiesel and we are a one-stop shop," the company says in a YouTube video, "we collect your yellow and brown grease."

The plant takes the yellow grease from restaurants and puts that grease through a fermentation process, which then transforms it into renewable fuel.

"This is really like a dream come true because for so long the idea of green jobs and the green economy and a cleaner energy future have sort of been plans on paper," said Mayor Bill Finch. "This is actual hardware, producing jobs and cleaner fuel for people's furnaces."

"Bridgeport has a great future as an eco-industrial city and I think there are opportunities across a wide variety of renewable power sources," said Esty, "and other activities for Bridgeport really to become a center for green industry, not just for Connecticut, but for the country."

The facility on Andover Street will be open seven days a week to receive grease.

This business is the first of many green businesses the mayor plans to build. In fact, they have a mattress recycling company that's going to be coming in the near future. It's all part of the mayor's plans for an eco-industrial park in the southwest end of Bridgeport.