Grease to Greece

South Londoner Andy Pag is organising a rally from London to Athens which is a road race with a difference as all the entrants will be in cars which rely on waste products as their fuel and drivers will have to scavenge their used cooking oil en-route to get to to the Greek capital. And the point of the race isn’t to get to Athens as fast as possibe - but to get there using the least fossil fuel. Each team will will have a fixed sum of GMs as currency (Grease Marks) which can be traded with other teams for oil and the winner will be the best ‘fat finder’ and will no doubt have the most GMs left at the end. The British Ambassador to Greece has promised to present the winner with the “Golden Lard Award”.    

There is a very interesting article on the Race and on biofuels in this Saturday’s Times newspaper in the Body & Soul Supplement (Green Living) titled “How to Get To Greece on Chip Fat and Old Bangers”. It’s by the lovely Anna Shepard. Anna has also written the book “How Green are My Wellies” (Eden Projec Books). 

here are Anna’s comments on the BIOFUELS DEBATE:

- What are biofuels? Fuel made from living things. This could be wood, sugar cane or animal dung. The two most common are bioethanol, produced by the fermentation of sugar in countries such as Brazil, and biodiesel, made from processing plants such as oil-seed rape.

- Why are they green? Burning biofuels still releases CO2, but the plants absorb a comparable amount while they are growing, so making the fuel carbon neutral.

- So what’s the problem? Biofuels have a heavier carbon footprint than often assumed. The crops need fertilisers and pesticides which are made from oil; processing also requires considerable energy. Recent concern centres on the land used to grow biofuels - many feel that it would be better used for growing food. There is concern too that biofuels will increase monoculture farming. A Friends of the Earth campaign, “Biofuels: The Road To Nowhere”, cites their potential to destroy forests and valuable habitats, as well as their role in higher food prices and threatened food supplies.

- In their defence Not all biofuels are bad, we simply have to be cautious about how we use them and the way that the industry expands. The main challenge is to ensure that we are able to separate good production methods from bad (destroying forests and habitats to plant crops is the worst). We must account for their carbon footprint, from “farm to forecourt”, and their sustainability, including the impact on people and wildlife in the areas where they are grown.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article4484408.ece