Delta Oil is the fourth startup featured on The Greener Path, a WAYA original series sponsored by Royal Herbs highlighting eco-friendly startups in Egypt.
“Egypt produces around a million tons of used cooking oil per year” Karim Salah, Co-Founder, Delta Oil tells WAYA. He explains that villagers ofter pour this waste onto the earth or into sewages in villages. This kind of spillage has adverse effects on farming land.
Delta Oil provides a solution to this problem. The startup collects used cooking oil from homes in villages and suburbs and creates biodiesel from this waste product. Biodiesel is a form of diesel fuel derived from plants or animals, in this case, used cooking oil and consisting of long-chain fatty acid esters. This sort of “organic” diesel can replace traditional diesel. It is rare to find entities and individuals using biodiesel in Egypt. As a result, the company usually exports biodiesel to Europe.
The startup started to reach out to rural communities to collect used cooking oil. However, this was a tricky process as some villagers were skeptical of the newcomers. Some thought they were trying to gather up the oils to produce soap, a custom in villages. With steady communication with locals, Delta Oil was able to convince lots of people to trade their cooking oil. It created a network of collection points in rural and suburban Egypt to collect the waste oil from individuals in exchange for goods.
Delta Oil is building an ecosystem for a thriving biodiesel industry by making use of a sustainable source of cheap used cooking oil.
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