People heading to the Taste of Chicago this weekend won’t have to feel as guilty about eating that extra portion of french fries. That grease is going to be put to good use.

ambi: step up guys, oil frying

This is the oil Jose Roman is using to fry coconut shrimp at Chicago Joe’s. But when all the shrimp are eaten that oil will be turned into biodiesel. The fat is sent to a treatment facility where it goes through a refining process.

City spokeswoman Veronica Mesa says they’ve had a hundred percent participation from the 65 restaurants at the Taste.

MESA: Every night they come through and they pick it up and they load it onto a truck and they take it and it’s a process. So it takes us some time to recycle the cooking oil.

The Illinois Restaurant Association says between 60 and 80,000 pounds of oil from the Taste will be made into biodiesel fuel.