Maine Standard Biofuels director of outreach and technology Alex Pine ’14, left.Maine Standard Biofuels director of outreach and technology Alex Pine ’14, left.

Alex Pine is the director of outreach and technology at Maine Standard Biofuels, a Portland-based company that manufactures biodiesel from used cooking grease from restaurants around the state and beyond. He started as a customer of the company, signed on for an internship, worked as a summer employee and, after graduating from College of the Atlantic, joined the company full time.

FILL ‘ER UP: Pine is from Torrance, California, where he says he was not unusual in having a car in high school. But it was a 1987 Mercedes that ran on biodiesel. “I still have it. I don’t drive it anymore, but it is in a secure location.” When he drove it across the country to start school at College of the Atlantic, he wasn’t sure where he’d be filling up. Wasn’t that risky? “I had all the equipment for stockpiling fuel in my trunk,” he explained. “A little hand pump, cans.” He stopped at Maine Standard Biofuels to fill up. Then he kept coming back, fueling up in more ways than one. “Being a city kid, Bar Harbor kind of got to me after a few months.”

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