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A company that turns chicken fat into biodiesel has been honored as the Manufacturing Industry of the Year for small companies for Pasco County on Florida’s Gulf of Mexico coast.

The Tampa Tribune reports Agri-Source Fuels picked up the honor at the Pasco Economic Development Council’s annual awards banquet:

EDC President Mary Jane Stanley said Agri-Source was honored because, as the state’s only biodiesel firm, its $1.7 million venture in Dade City represents an investment in the future.

The company makes about 3 million gallons now, but it has the potential to expand that to 10 million gallons in the near future and to 60 million gallons within a few years.

The article goes on to say that despite the cost of their feedstock, rendered chicken grease, doubling in the last year, the company is profitable… thanks to the even faster expansion of the popularity of the green fuel.

No macaroni-covered tissue boxes for some summer campers near Poolsville, Maryland this summer. They learned about how to be green using clean-burning biodiesel.

This story from Biodiesel Magazine says this is the second year Calleva Inc.’s Building Green adventure camp offered 12-18 year-olds the chance to learn about sustainable building construction and biodiesel production:

One day of the building green week is spent touring the camp’s biodiesel production facilities and learning how it’s made. This unique opportunity is made possible by the efforts of two of the camp’s directors, Matt Markoff and Dave Ritter.

Campers who tour the production facility are shown the basics involved in biodiesel production and given the opportunity to see what it takes to make the fuel, as well as learn about other alternative fuel options. Because the production process contains various chemicals, campers don’t get too many hands-on activities that day, but “having the grease on their pants adds to the experience,” Ritter said. “They’re going to remember that and the next time they eat French fries for dinner they might think about how the oil that was used to cook their dinner can now be used to make biodiesel.”

The camp gets its feedstock for the biodiesel from the used grease of six local restaurants. In the near future, camp officials hope to produce 600 gallons of biodiesel a week to run the camp’s buses, tractors and other vehicles… making this summer camp project pay off long after the macaroni has fallen off the average tissue box.

The world’s largest producer of camelina is fast becoming the biggest producer of a non-food feedstock for biodiesel.

This press release from Great Plains – The Camelina Company says it has several crushing partners in North America, helping it produce more than 10 million road miles of camelina biodiesel to date… and the company plans to bump that up to 100 million gallons by the year 2012:

The U.S. Energy Bill signed at the end of 2007 increases the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) to 36 billion gallons by 2022. But, with the rising cost of consumer goods, this mandate has come under fire recently as the primary reason land is being used to grow crops for fuel instead of for food production. Camelina offers a solution for reaching this biodiesel production goal by providing a sustainable, low-input biofuel feedstock option that does not interfere with food production. Camelina is virtually 100 percent efficient. It can be harvested and crushed for oil and the remaining parts can be used to produce high quality omega-3 rich animal feed, fiberboard and glycerin.

Camelina does not take away from land currently being utilized for food production because it has the ability to grow on marginal land utilizing very little moisture. Camelina also fits into many farming operations as an excellent rotational crop to break the cycle of continuous small grains cropping. Even more important to some growers, camelina has been shown to enhance the yield of subsequent crops such as wheat by up to 15 percent.

Great Plains started commercial camelina production three years ago, paying growers in North America to grow the oil seed. After 10 years of research into camelina, Great Plains has developed higher-yielding, higher oil-content camelina varieties… just in time to feed the current boom in the biodiesel market.