As measures are being taken to counter thefts of copper from telephone and power lines, a new type of theft is developing.
Once considered waste by restaurants, their used cooking oil has since become a valuable commodity used in creating bio-diesel fuel.
Theft of used cooking oil has become big business.
This week Quebec provincial police arrested seven people in the Montreal and Laval area on suspicion of operating an oil-theft ring.
One company in Quebec told the Radio-Canada investigative programme “Enquete” that it is losing about 20 percent of the used cooking oil it normally would collect, or about 150 tonnes a week.
Nationally, Canada’s oil-recycling industry said that stolen oil represent a loss to governments of about 11-million dollars a year in tax money.
Some 4-million of that 11-million dollar loss takes place in the province of Quebec alone.
While there had been a small market for used cooking oil in the manufacture of cosmetics and pet foods, with the advent of bio-fuels, the demand has far exceeded the supply.
It’s now worth up to $800 a tonne.
Sales director Pascal Demers of Sanimax, one of the recycling companies looking into their losses, told Radio-Canada, “The people we’ve approached know they’re buying stolen merchandise, but they turn a blind eye by saying they need the volume”.
The president of another oil-recycling company, Robert Geoffrey of Distribution Katrina, said thieves are rarely punished as authorities don’t consider it as a serious crime. “The police don’t see the millions of dollars behind this. They also don’t see the losses”, he said.
Used cooking oil theft is a big problem in the USA as well. According to the American National Renderers Association, used cooking-oil theft deprives the U.S. treasury of $75 million in taxes each year.
California has just adopted new laws allowing for fines up to $10,000 for oil theft and giving police authority to seize oil-collecting vehicles
Radio-Canada hidden camera catches a theft as it occurs
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