Filling up is a dreadful moment for the average consumer but not for Justin Dervaes. He hand-cranks his own pump and fills the family car up with home-brewed biodiesel.

Dervaes, a biodiesel homebrewer, jokes about the odd-looking mechanism: “This is our gas station on wheels.”

The refinery is in the back of the family's organic garden. The Dervaes were the first in Los Angeles to make their own biodiesel with a basic set-up: a few tubes, a pump and an old water heater. The recipe contains methanol, lye and used vegetable oil. Everything cooks for about thirty hours before distillation yields biodiesel. 

Justin proudly states: “When we started, diesel was $2.60 and we were making it for a dollar. Now diesel is $5.60 and we're still making it for a dollar. So the financial reward is greater than when we started. It’s good for the environment, it's good for us, and we can make it.”

Powering the family car on biodiesel is not about driving more for less. It's one of the ways Jules Dervaes, the founder of “Path to Freedom,” protects the planet from noise and air pollution. “Biodiesel has a lubricant in it that turns the noise level down significantly," he says. "And another thing is the smell. When you turn the car with biodiesel you’ll smell the smell of frying oil, so they call it French-fry fragrance. If the oil was used to fry French fries then it releases that smell. All of a sudden you’re going down the street and you think you smell French fries, it's your car!”

The Dervaes pick up the biodiesel recipe’s main ingredient in restaurants - sometimes in exchange for a few products from their farm. It's a fair trade for both parties, says Daniel Vasquez, owner of Elements Kitchen restaurant: “Before, we used to have these big tanks in the back. We would go dump it out there and it would sit there for weeks and start smelling. Also, when it spilled over that was a mess. But the Dervaes, they come and pick it up and it’s out the door. They’re using it for something good and I get rid of it a lot faster. It's a win-win situation.”

That’s how one man’s trash becomes another man’s treasure. Some California restaurants are even beginning to report thefts of used vegetable oil. Far from the rising cost of regular oil, biodiesel remains cheap. But this could change as an increasing number of consumers turn to alternative energies in search of a better deal.