BioFuels Journal

High crude oil prices are pushing companies to look for ways to cut costs by reducing petroleum use.

According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, companies are increasingly looking to biodiesel and other biobased products as an alternative to petroleum-based products.

California-based Method Products, which manufactures a line of home cleaning products, is working to eliminate diesel from its fleet by using biodiesel.

The company’s trucks are decorated with the slogan “Biodiesel is how we roll".

"We have seven trucks and 18 trailers that run on a minimum of 20 percent biodiesel," said Drummond Lawson, Method's director of sustainability.

"Lowering our costs and our exposure to oil is just part of it. Our other goal is to reduce resource consumption as much as possible in making our products."

Another example is Ford Motor Co., which has eliminated 5 million pounds of petroleum annually by using soybean-based cushions in all of its North American vehicles.

McDonald’s is testing paper cups for hot drinks in place of polystyrene containers, which start out as petroleum.

Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo are becoming bioplastic bottlers.

"When oil was cheap, it became pervasive throughout our economy in hundreds and hundreds of invisible ways, as a raw material," said Daniel Yergin, an energy consultant who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry.

"Now there are accelerating efforts to squeeze oil out and find ways to substitute for it. That is the power of price."

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