the monster at the end of sustainable biodiesel

What is a fair price for sustainable biodiesel?

That's a question that I've been thinking about a lot lately. After years of wondering, and with help from some friends (Lyle, JohnO, thank you!), I finally know the answer, but like the monster at the end of Grover's book, I can't give it away quite yet. Please bear with me...

To answer the price question, we really need to first understand what "sustainability" actually means. The newly created National Biodiesel Board Sustainability Taskforce has adopted, as a working definition, the following, based on the work of the Brundtland Commission:

You can see in that definition the "triple bottom line" of people, the planet, and profits. Those are the three factors that every definition of sustainability seems to revolve around. So it would make sense that if our company is carbon-neutral, our employees are happy and healthy, our shareholders are enriched by their investment in our company, and our customers are loyal and satisfied, we are sustainable, and probably charging that "fair price."

So, how do we actually stack up?

Well, let's start with environmental integrity. Or, let's not. Um, well, you see, this is where I have to admit to an embarrassing list of deficiencies in our operations. I won't bore you with all of them, but the big ones really sting: we still heat with grid-provided electricity, we still don't have methanol recovery, and we still use water for washing.

Moving right along, we get to economic prosperity.

This is where I'm supposed to tell you about how we've been a real boon for the local economy and our investors. And we have, in some ways.

We employ ten people. We recycle a local resource and add value to it. And we try, we really do, to source everything locally and focus on small businesses as vendors.

But our methanol and KOH come from very far away, and our shareholders have not yet benefited in any tangible ways from our growth.

In fact, a lot of their money has been used to subsidize our losses, which have *hopefully* stopped piling up, after six-and-a-half frigging years.

My wife and I are the President and Vice President of a growing company, and yet we each make around $15/hour (less, if you consider all the overtime we don't get paid for), in Northern California of all places. This is economic prosperity? We had to wait a few months to save up for a new couch, which we bought on sale!

And don't even get me started on the complaints from our customers whenever we are forced to begrudgingly raise our price.

Which gets me to quality of life. I think I can best illustrate this one by talking about my dad and Sandy.

My dad, Steve Plocher, is our company's financial guru. He works about 20 intense hours a week for the company, and makes about $15,000/yr for his efforts. He also maintains his own accountancy firm two hours away, so he can put my little brother through college.

Dad used to think he'd be retired on a farm by now.

Sandy Turner is our oil collection manager. He works harder than just about anyone I've ever seen, sometimes putting in over 60 hours/week. And he steadfastly refuses various rewards that the company would like to give him for his hard work, beyond his meager wages (which are worse than mine and Sunny's), because he knows the company can't afford it.

Sandy is married with kids, and yet he spends so much of his time schlepping around grease and smelling awful. Why does he do it? A person would have to be crazy to make that choice.

But here's the thing: Sandy is a genius. He knows the monster at the end, the fair price of sustainable biodiesel, is nothing to be afraid of.

So, to find out for yourself, turn the page. If you dare...

What Sandy and all the folks pictured above understand is the long-term commitment here. Which, by the way, is the answer to the question.

The true price of sustainable biodiesel is: a long-term commitment, from all the stakeholders.

Think about it- Yokayo Biofuels is not going to achieve true "environmental integrity" for a long time, and by then, our definition of that phrase will have probably evolved. And as far as economic prosperity, there's so much growth and infrastructure-building left to be done, that I hardly have had a sniff of what that actually is.

And then there's my dad and Sandy's sacrifice. They're both in their 50's, by the way, so maybe they get this whole "perspective" thing better than some of us youngsters.

Yeah, I know, there was no monster at the end of this book, but monsters are not nearly as exciting as a long, drawn-out struggle for planetary survival, right? S