- [Chef Joseph] Front desk manager came to get me, she was like, "Chef, there is a
little girl here to see you about some oil." And I was kind of confused.
- [Man] I just remember there was a girl that appeared to be the leader of the
group, and I think her name was Cassandra.
- [Cassandra] Our ocean state of Rhode Island may become the under ocean state by
2100 if global warming is allowed to continue at the current rate.
My name is Cassandra Lin. My team and I asked local restaurant owners to donate
their waste cooking oil for our project. The grease is then converted into
biodiesel fuel.
- They came in with this great idea about donating oil to actually heat
homes for people less fortunate than us.
- [Together] We started project TGIF. Turn Grease Into Fuel.
- [Lin] We kind of think, "This is a kid's project. It will probably last a year or
two at the most".
- I am now 17 years old. I found out about global warming when I was in
fifth grade. My friends and I, we looked at these projections, and we saw that our
town, places we loved, would all be submerged. It was kind of almost
apocalyptic. I knew immediately that I wanted to help prevent it in any way that
I could. So the first thing that we actually did was we performed a skit at
one of the town council meetings. So they actually agreed to help us set up a grease
recycling site at the transfer station.
- [Caswell] It took a group of 10 year olds to sell it. "A little child shall
lead them," sort of thing.
- But after that, we signed up the restaurants to participate in the
program. And a lot of them initially were very wary of signing up with a bunch of
10 year olds.
- [Wood] I get a lot of salesmen who come in and my first thing is, "Make an
appointment."
- Hi, how are you?
- [Miles] They see you as just a kid and it takes 5, 10 follow up visits just to
sign up one restaurant.
- It's good to see you. They had something that was viable. "I said sure.
We'll do it."
- Though we have 132 restaurants right now, according to the EPA's
estimations, we have offset 3 million pounds of CO2 emissions just from using
the biofuel here. Three million is huge. It's hard to make that tangible.
♪ [music] ♪
How are you?
- Good, how are you? It just opened my eyes to see that there is
something needs to change or else this beautiful world we live in might not
be here anymore.
♪ [music] ♪
- [Child] We can all agree that Rhode Island is small.
- But we're a part of this world.
- [Together] And we can make a difference.
♪ [music] ♪