Thirteen-Year-Old Makes Fuel

Thirteen-year-old Cassandra Lin from Westerly, Rhode Island, is using cooking oil to make fuel.

Lin’s project didn’t lean on a biodiesel refinery – instead, she got her whole town involved. She and her organization – Turning Grease into Fuel, or TGIF – talked the town council into establishing a cooking oil container, and then convinced restaurants and citizens to dump grease into it. Once that seemed to be going well, Lin and TGIF expanded. TGIF now generates more than 30,000 gallons of biodiesel each year and offsets 250 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Over the past two years, in addition to turning gunk into fuel, TGIF was a regional winner for the President’s Environmental Youth Awards, and Lin was designated an Earth Child Institute "Earth Child of the Month." The United Nations has recognized Lin as well, and she’ll be one of 1,400 young people at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro next June.

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