For most of the industry's history, brown grease, the FOG (fats, oils, and grease) pulled from municipal grease traps, has been the feedstock nobody wanted to deal with. Landfilled. Incinerated. Ignored. That's changing fast.
Downey Ridge Environmental Company, known in the trade as Greasezilla, is finalizing installation at a Virginia facility that's weeks from going live. And it may be one of the more consequential pieces of infrastructure the brown grease industry has seen built in some time.
Brian Levine, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President at Greasezilla, offered a candid look at what the Virginia site actually represents: "This facility represents a true 360 approach, where all input material is completely recovered and recycled." Brown grease extracted from the FOG stream feeds renewable diesel, marine fuel, and sustainable aviation fuel refineries under the RoundestFuel.com brand. Solids are diverted to anaerobic digesters. Processed water is returned to the municipality with low BOD, proper pH, and low TSS — essentially clean. Nothing goes to waste.
Levine is calling it a model for nationwide expansion, and the company has the capital partner to back that claim up.
In October 2024, Greasezilla and bp announced a strategic and financial agreement to build out brown grease waste capture at scale, with bp financing the expansion of Greasezilla's production facilities to support feedstock delivery into the RD and SAF markets. The deal targets up to 40 new FOG receiving stations nationwide, with bp committing up to $5 million per site. The Virginia facility under current installation is part of that buildout, a bp-funded site coming online under the Greasezilla process.
The broader rollout is already moving. Levine noted that "bp Greasezilla sites are being established nationwide," with the system designed to give haulers "cost-effective, affordable, and convenient discharge and disposal sites" — directly addressing the FOG dilemma that has long burdened city wastewater infrastructure.
For traders and brokers, brown grease is already Jacobsen-reported feedstock. The bp-backed expansion is explicitly aimed at growing the supply of brown grease into the RD and SAF markets, which means more volume moving through recognized pricing channels and more counterparties to work with as receiving capacity comes online.
For grease collectors, the Virginia facility's output profile is worth watching. A feedstock stream yielding near-pure brown grease with solids handled separately and water returned clean is a different animal than conventional grease trap haul. Lower contamination, cleaner logistics, a feedstock that arrives ready to process.
The industry has talked about unlocking brown grease at scale for years. A major oil company writing nine-figure checks to build the receiving infrastructure is a different kind of signal. The Virginia site goes live soon. Watch for the next one.
