SustainableCommunity

Tempura oil collecting robots! Tottori city’s unique project begins

By BrettSep 28th, 2009

tempra
Some Rights Reserved. Photo by jetalone

We all love tempura, but making it at home can be such a hassle. But starting from now on we should all definitely do it homemade. I mean, now we can the left over oil to get points!

That is because there is a new tempura oil collecting robot! Started in February, Tottori city began a project to reuse old cooking oils such as tempura oil for to conserve and raise environmental awareness. As a pilot project for the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, Tottori will begin a demonstration-of-concept experiment that will involve many groups such as citizens, city workers, oil reclamation workers, and a employees of a software company. The “person” in charge is a robot named Yukai-kun. And actually, he is pretty smart.

Yukai-kun No.1, who began this round of the experiment, was set up in the Tottori city community center. When a participating member passes their member’s card through the machine, the well secured Yukai-kun opens his automatic door for oil to be poured in. Data regarding the reclamation of oil is uploaded via the Internet in real time, and when Yukai-kun is full he sends and automatic notification that he needs to be emptied. People related to the project say that system is a highly efficient and waste-less.

What is the greatest part for the members is the point system. When the members pour oil into Yukai-kun they rack up points. The points will be able to be used for all sorts of benefits. Members can manage their points with a computer or cell phone with a handy website.

This discarded and then reclaimed cooking can be heat treated and then processed to be used in make up or purified for bio-fuel for buses or trucks. Now, in Tottori there are cars from a car-sharing program and city buses that use this reclaimed oil, and from now on people who use Yukai-kun can use the points to ride the buses and use the ride share program cars. The town says it has many more plans for strengthening programs that have an eye for making a sustainable society.

Reclaiming dirty oil and such may seem like a hardship of days long past, I think, but using a networking system like this can make it a convenient and fun process. That is the kind of future the people in Tottori city are envisioning and actualizing with their discarded-oil-reclaiming robot. Now there are plans to put other Yukai-kuns in supermarkets throughout the city and the city plan to seek, within next year, over 10 thousand members to participate in their proof-of-concept experiment.

The day is coming pretty soon when it will be totally normal to bring our used oil to the super market, along with our plastic bottles and paper milk boxes, I think.We hope that the giant step forward that is beginning in Tottori will soon reach us all.


This article has been translated from the original Japanese post　

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