To Greece, by car, on grease

Carbon-conscious enthusiasts beg restaurants and cafes for waste vegetable oil to power their European journey, converting an estimated 350 litres of oil into fuel on their 11 day trip

• Helena Smith
• guardian.co.uk,
• Thursday August 28 2008 13:04 BST
• Article history

The 'Grease to Greece' rally makes its way to central Athens to promote awareness of alternative biofuels. Photograph: Yiorgos Karahalis/Reuters

A group of British eco-enthusiasts have just pulled off the greenest and grubbiest car rally ever, driving from London to Athens in vehicles powered exclusively on waste vegetable oil.

The team motored with unexpected ease across Europe on the proceeds of the grease thrown away by restaurants and cafes along the way. Their hope is that the 2,500-mile feat will help a drive to create a commodity out of cooking oils that otherwise end up in landfills or the sea. Unlike ethanol and other controversial biofuels, recycled cooking fat does not impact on food production.

"I think we can safely say that this is the first long-distance car journey in Europe that has relied on restaurants and burger bars as an informal network of filling stations," said Andy Pag, a 34-year-old Londoner, who organised the rally.

"It's true we spent a lot of time fat-finding, knocking on the doors of restaurants begging for their waste, but it worked. And the beauty, of course, is that when such supplies are collected straight from a restaurant and used as fuel they have a zero-carbon footprint," he told the Guardian, after an awards ceremony highlighting alternatives to fossil fuels at the British embassy in Athens.

Eight teams took part, driving cars that ranged from a brand new Renault to, in Pag's case, a 13–year-old former taxi. They estimate that 350 litres of cooking oil were used to fuel the 11-day expedition.

Some of the vehicles had been converted to run on vegetable oil. Those driving "uncoverted" cars brewed up biodiesel using a portable "fuel pod" processor – a 2,500lb (1,134kg) contraption carried in a transit van that they described as being "as easy as a washing machine to use."

Pag conducted his first carbon neutral trip in 2007, driving from London to Timbuktu in a lorry powered by diesel made from cocoa butter, produced by a chocolate factory in the UK. He said he was amazed at the curiosity the rally engendered, with crowds invariably gathering to witness the re-fuelling process.

"We used what is known as an oily bits centrifuge system, the world's first mobile purification system for cars, to filter the waste en route," said Pag's co-driver, secondary school teacher Esther Obiri-Darko. "It gets rid of all the crud." Manufactured in the UK, the system costs around £500 and includes a pump.

The group's overarching aim is to encourage people to look at alternatives to fossil fuels. "I think we made quite a lot of converts along the way," said Pag. "There's a whole trail out there of restaurant owners who are now looking at their waste products with different eyes. Our hope is that others will start to realise the energy that is in waste, too."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/28/biofuels.carbonemissions

Where do I start?

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What’s the use of recycling waste cooking oil?

Apart from the fact, that your CO2 emissions are close to nil while driving your diesel powered car, enormous savings are associated:

• Someone driving 50.000 k a year could reduce their annual fuel bill by some 80% from €3500 to €750 a year
• A car rental company, hiring their diesel cars with fuel included in the rental price, could net another €17.500, if they run ten cars doing some 300.000k p.a. Apart from giving a sound ecological image of their company to the potential client, they would bill their customers the service station rate of biodiesel, some €22.000 but the cost to produce the fuel is only €4500.
• A hotel will produce some 5200 litres of waste cooking oil p.a,, which recycled on site into biodiesel will save them €5000 p.a. and provide them with an additional 2000 lb of soap, a by-product when making biodiesel which cuts costs in the laundry.
• Boat owners know how fast their engines burn up fuel and a day trip can cost €1000 at the gas `pumps in the port. Producing your own biodiesel would reduce this to €200.

ECO- SCHOOL on the Costa del Sol

This summer, chemistry teacher Sean Johnson purchased a British made processor, to convert waste cooking oil for Sotogrande International College, in Southern Spain to biodiesel to run the school’s buses.

The initiative, which is part of an international program to make schools energy efficient, is the first in Spain.

A sustainable journey may well result in tremendous savings, as the cost of running the school buses can be reduced by almost 80 % to some 25 €cents per litre, miles away from the average €1.20 the school used to pay for fossil fuel.

At 15p a litre, home-brew biodiesel is fuel of the future

Drivers spurn forecourt for the pub restaurant when they need to fill their tanks

This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday May 10 2008 on p17 of the UK news section. It was last updated at 01:27 on May 10 2008.

Every few weeks Gordon Elliott drives 22 miles to the Hare and Hounds pub in Marple, Cheshire, collects a barrel of waste cooking oil from his stepdaughter and takes it back to his personal oil refinery in his garage in Leigh, near Bolton. The retired construction site manager then decants the liquid into a machine and adds a few chemicals.

Twenty-four hours later the waste oil has been purified, filtered and refined and is ready to be used in one of his family's two diesel cars. Instead of paying £1.25p a litre at the local supermarket, he has paid 15p to make his own biodiesel. He says he is saving nearly £100 a month - as well as 90% of the greenhouse gases he would normally emit from driving. The cars perform perfectly, the equipment will be paid for within a year and the pleasure of making his own fuel is intense. "It's the principle. I do it for the environment and to spite the exchequer," he said.

Elliott, 79, is part of a cottage industry of people who have turned to making their own recycled "biodiesel" in response to the doubling of fuel prices in just over a year. Companies making biodiesel "reactors" report booming sales and demand for cheaper diesel is outstripping anything they can produce.

"Our business has doubled in size in just the last six months," said David Taylor of Ecotec Resources, the Lancashire company which sold Elliott his machine and which also makes 100,000 litres a year of recycled fuel.

"If you can collect your own oil it works out at about 15p a litre. Otherwise you can buy in your waste oil for about 30p, so you are getting diesel for about 45p. That's a big saving on the forecourt price." He is selling 15-20 biodiesel machines a week and has sold 800 in under a year to taxi firms, hauliers, restaurants and others.

DIY diesel is seen by many as the revenge of the little man on the government, oil companies and the authorities. No one knows how many backroom refineries there are in Britain, but a government study suggested there were around 1,400 small scale plants producing a few thousand litres a year in 2005/6. Since then the price of diesel has more than doubled and the market for machines has risen. People in the industry suggest there are 35 companies refining recycled oil commercially and perhaps 20,000 individuals making private arrangements to collect and process oil from local restaurants, chip shops and food manufacturers.

Since the law was relaxed to allow people to make 2,500 litres a year for their own use, most are working legally, but as the price of fuel rises inexorably, so criminal elements are moving in.

"There are wars going on in London to get the oil," said Tom Lasica, who runs Pure Fuels, London's largest refiner of vegetable oil. "Spanish and German companies are moving in to buy up British used vegetable oil. People are stealing it from each other and selling it abroad. We heard that one fish and chip shop in Southend was broken into just to steal the waste oil."

"A lot of people are making the diesel for new cars. A year ago most people were putting it into old cars. Now the quality of the oil is critical," said Kym Leatt, a director of Envirogroup, which collects, refines and sells 7,500 litres a week in Kent.

"If we could produce five times as much biodiesel we could sell it just like that," said Leatt. "Demand has grown exponentially. Every day we have two or three new businesses asking us. Some companies are saving £25,000 a year. Were selling it to hauliers, taxi firms, fleets of tipper trucks. In the past it would either go down the drain or go to landfill. This is true recycling." He is selling for 98p a litre compared with £1.18-£1.25 at the pumps.

"Demand is going through the roof. We're selling biodiesel machines to the average Joe, universities, schools, restaurants, taxi drivers, absolutely anyone," said James Hygate, a director of GreenFuels. "We've noticed a surge of people driving company cars. They are making their own and then claiming 45p a mile from their firms.

"It's a true grassroots industry. The better quality oil is being taken at source by the small guys. Home scale production is definitely growing fast. Groups of farmers are beginning to grow the crops and make their own diesel."

Demand is growing from institutions and local authorities. The borough of Richmond is this week putting out a tender for a £3.5m contract to run all its 300 council vehicles on recycled vegetable oil for the next three years. The council says it could save nearly £100,000 and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by several thousand tons.

Back in Marple, Elliott will this weekend be heading for the Hare and Hounds to pick up another barrel. "Everyone wants it. But if I have any left over I'll give it to the lad," he says.

Across the desert to Timbuktu in a car fuelled by chocolate

One might think a chocolate-powered vehicle would be as much use as a chocolate tea cup – but two British adventurers have embarked on a trek across Europe and west Africa which aims to show that it could be a new, clean mode of transport.

Andy Pag and his co-driver John Grimshaw left Mr Grimshaw's home town of Poole, Dorset, on a cross-Channel ferry yesterday. They are travelling in a Ford Iveco Cargo lorry powered by fuel which began life as chocolate, in an attempt to raise awareness of "green" biofuels. Their 4,500-mile (7,250 km) trip across the Sahara desert to Timbuktu in Mali should take about three weeks.

The pair have taken with them a small processing unit to convert waste oil products into fuel, which they will then donate to an African charity, along with the lorry. They are taking 2,000 litres (454 gallons) of biodiesel made from 4,000kg (8,818lb) of chocolate misshapes – equivalent to 80,000 chocolate bars.

But they will not be able to dip into their tank if they feel peckish because biodiesel does not look or smell like ordinary chocolate. It is made from cocoa butter extracted from the waste chocolate.

The pair will drive across France and Spain and then catch another ferry to Morocco. Mr Pag, 34, from Croydon, and 39-year-old Mr Grimshaw, an electrician, will then cross the country to Mauritania. From there, they will drive through the Sahara to Timbuktu.

To traverse the shifting desert sands and the pot-holed roads in Mali, Mr Pag and Mr Grimshaw will drive two converted 4x4 Toyota Land Cruisers, which are carried in the main lorry. The pair wanted to come up with a trip that would be carbon neutral. They contacted a Preston company, Ecotec, which had been testing a biofuel made from waste chocolate collected from factories. Ecotec turned the waste chocolate into bio-ethanol by mixing it with vegetable oil collected from restaurants.

Mr Pag said: "Timbuktu is renowned as being the back of beyond, the furthest place away that you can possibly imagine. If we can make it there with biofuel, there is no reason why motorists can't use it on the school run or their commute to work."

Mr Pag said he hoped the expedition would encourage people to think about their carbon footprint when travelling. He added: "I have made many expeditions and visited these amazing landscapes but to get there I have contributed to their destruction by driving a guzzling diesel engine.

"I wanted to do something that is carbon neutral. What we have actually done is carbon negative."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/across-the-desert-to-timbuktu-in-a-car-fuelled-by-chocolate-760231.html