Going the way of the grease
As a Norwegian farm kid who's one generation removed from the out-house, the frugal lifestyle was what we lived and it still (possibly to a fault) pervades me to this time.
While it was a radical change of mindset to stop splitting wood and go with collecting waste veggie oil (WVO) instead, there's no way that I'd ever want to pick up a splitting maul again. I've been able to pull in a resturant, bakery, and a small-town university as my primary WVO sources, and pay them anywhere from $0.10 to $0.25 per gallon for such (and they believe that they're getting the bargain).
The method of collection usually is custom-built for the place that I'm buying it from, with the primary focus being sanitation, safety (i.e., spill prevention) as well as ergonomics (easy for them to dump). I've uploaded pictures of two of my custom-designed dumping stationsfor you to check out.
Right now the WVO is heated, filtered and stored clean either in a 150-gallon cone-tank (ready-to-use for home heating or else making biodiesel) or else in 55-gallon drums. The house is warmed (in the winter of course) and my domestic water is heated 24/7/365 with the WVO using a waste oil burner from kingbuilt.com. In the near future, I intend to put a water-to-air heat exchanger in my clothes dryer air inlet so that all we'll need to do is turn the knob to the no-heat selection and minimize the 220 volt draw.
After that, I intend to modify my gas grill so that it can burn biodiesel in a manner similar to the way that the old wick-style kerosene lanterns worked and thus eliminate my dependence on LP. An after that, it will be a diesel-powered water pump, and then ....
The bottom line is that if you look at this as an energy conservation-based hobby, then it really becomes a fun challenge to see how many ways that you can apply this low-cost energy source.
Keep on collecting ...
Brian