U’s Corporation is engaged in the recycling business by collecting used tempura oil etc. It is the graphic chart with the message “Last week, we collected 11.61 tons of waste cooking oil throughout the whole Tokyo area” that jumps out at you when you visit the company’s homepage. Next to that, you can find a very clear explanation about the company’s recycle project which says: “If the VDF (Vegetable Diesel Fuel) that can be produced from this waste cooking oil is used for diesel fuel, carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by 27573.75 kilograms.” (The value is as of September 18.)

In our country, about 2 million tons of cooking oil is consumed yearly and about 400 thousand tons of it is disposed of. The amount of waste cooking oil including tempura oil used at home is as much as about 150 thousand tons, and most of which is either disposed of as garbage after congealing it with coagulating agents or absorbing it with paper or thrown into rivers as living drainage. It is U’s that took notice of this waste cooking oil with the aim of transforming it into new natural energy, which has gathered attention from various quarters as the ultimate ecology.

U’s Corporation
Yumi Someya, President

Became a waste cooking oil buyer in her 20’s

Used tempura oil is collected in various life networks developed through “TOKYO Yuden 2017” activities.

Activities of “TOKYO Yuden 2017”

“After graduating high school, I wandered around Asia. While traveling in Tibet, I was almost swept away with the Land Cruiser that I was in by a landslide. I really had a narrow escape from death. I learned that the remote cause of this disaster lies in environmental destruction caused by humans, which motivated me to turn my attention to environmental issues. But when I carried my chopsticks with me, people still looked at me strangely those days,” said President Yumi Someya reminiscing about her former days.

Consumption was considered the greatest virtue those days, therefore, people still had little interest in ecology and the global environment, which was the “ice age” of environmental issues.

“My parents run Someya Shoten in Sumida Ward in Tokyo and are engaged in recycling used cooking oil. Someya Shoten is a family-run company that my grandfather started after the war in 1949 and they used to collect not only used cooking oil, but also tenkasu, which is produced as a byproduct when cooking tempura or croquettes. They produced oil by squeezing what remained in the used oil and processed the oil produced from doing that into raw materials for soap or food after they had refined it. For a certain period after the war, an 18-liter square can of waste oil was as expensive as the same amount of rice, so even waste cooking oil must have been of particular value those days.”

President Someya says with a forced smile: “My grandfather and father were both the pioneers of recycling.” President Someya, who was brought up in an old part of town, seemed to have acquired her attitude toward recycling without knowing. It was in 1991 that Ms. Someya started helping her parents with their business after having quit her wandering around in Asia as well as her job at a travel agency that she had worked at for a while.

“Before that, you had to pay money to collect used cooking oil; however, inexpensive oil started to come on the market from foreign countries, by which refined oil got knocked off the market and as a result, the company faced difficulty in continuing its recycling business. Nevertheless, people who used oil for business purposes and found it hard to get rid of a large amount of used oil came to tell us, ‘We will pay you if you take the used oil off our hands’ People gradually changed their attitude.”

Those days, President Someya carried business cards that introduced her as an “Oil buyer.” She ran here, there and everywhere in Tokyo looking for used cooking oil. She says: “In other words, I started to view Tokyo as a huge oilfield.”

VDF is a vegetable-oil-based alternative light oil fuel that Someya Shoten developed independently.	“Yuden Sekken”(lit. ‘oil field soap’), medicated hand soap made from used tempura oil with no artificial perfumes or coloring, is available for sale.

Building sustainable society where energy is recycled

We were engaged in collecting discarded cooking oil and producing biodiesel fuel, which came to be widely supported. And the more people came to be concerned about environmental issues, the more the business developed. Then in 1997, when she was 29 years old, one department of Someya Shoten was separated as U’s Corporation.

President Someya states: “I entrusted Someya Shoten to my brother, and we, U’s Corporation, focused our attention on building a sustainable society where energy can be recycled by means of what is called “oil.” For most consumers, used cooking oil is “garbage” that they have to get rid of after congealing it with coagulating agents or absorbing it with paper, but it is a precious resource for U’s. First of all, we had to face the challenge of how to collect cooking oil used at home. If we spend too much money on collecting a small amount of used cooking oil from each household, the business will become unprofitable. And we cannot expect consumers to pay for transportation fees to send us used cooking oil, because any business that depends on the goodwill of others’ has no prospect of future growth.

The generating method is quite simple technically; however, nobody showed any interest in it, which prevented the idea from being brought to realization. Later, she finally succeeded in producing VDF, biodiesel fuel, made from used cooking oil for the first time in the world. She had its ignition point and calorific value inspected in the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Technology Center and had its viscosity and specific gravity tested in Hokkaido University, which proved that the VDF she had developed could be used as alternative diesel fuel. Nevertheless, it took courage for her to put it into practical use.

“First, we made a proposal to the government. We asked if it was possible to make ‘used cooking oil’ a category of waste. But they just kept making excuses saying that liquids were difficult to handle and there was no prospect of collecting a large amount of used oil.” President Someya says that she felt they were extremely reluctant to collect used oil. And what came along after many trials was an “oil-collection station,” which is now located in various places such as restaurants, drugstores, temples, tennis schools, etc. to which anyone can freely take used tempura oil anytime he or she wants.

There are about 200 oil-collection stations in and around Tokyo now. “Some people are working as volunteers at each oil-collection station, and if companies and stores cooperate with us, they can make a social contribution, which will lead to gaining more people’s approval. If this colleting network works smoothly, an immense amount of discarded oil will change into immeasurable resources, since Tokyo is a huge oil field.” (President Someya)

The VDF that serves as bio-based fuel has been gathering attention as an alternative light oil fuel, and because used tempura oil can also be utilized as natural energy, people have come to pay increasing attention to a new approach of generating electricity by means of VDF since the Great East Japan Earthquake last year.

U’s is now promoting the project “TOKYO Yuden 2017.” (Yuden means an “oil field” in Japanese.) “We set a goal of changing all the used cooking oil in Tokyo into earth-conscious resources by 2017. To do this, we are going to increase the number of oil-colleting locations from 200 to about 2000,” said President Someya firmly at the end of the interview.

U's Corporation：

Collection and recycling of waste cooking oil, and research, development, sales, etc. of VDF plants

ADDRESS: 4F, J Bldg. (Higashi-Nihonbashi Office), 3-9-12 Higashi-Nihonbashi, Chuo Ward, Tokyo, 103-0004, Japan
TEL: ＋81-3-6661-1610
FAX: ＋81-3-6661-1606
Capital:20 million yen
Number of employees: 9 people
Establishment：1997