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Eat More Chocolate and Help the Environment
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david jakupca
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Nov 07, 2007 04:51 PST
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Chocoholics can assuage any guilt they may feel after a new process was
developed that turns the by-products of making chocolate into a biofuel
-- meaning you can eat your chocolate and be eco-friendly.
A truck, fuelled by the biofuel, will set out from Poole on the English
south coast to Mali in West Africa later this month on a charity
mission.
"The chocolate waste used to be used in landfill. But now we can make it
travel as biofuel," said organiser Andy Pag who will be one of the two
drivers on the trip.
North western English firm Ecotec has taken waste from the chocolate
manufacturing process, turned it into bio-ethanol and mixed it with
vegetable oil to produce biodiesel.
Some biofuels have come under fire for either diverting much-needed food
crops or leading to massive deforestation as land is cleared to grow
crops specially for biofuel production.
"This is to show that you can have environmentally-friendly biofuels and
that you don't have to convert normal diesel engines to use it," Pag
told Reuters.
The BioTruck will depart on Nov. 26 and is expected to take about three
weeks to drive the 4,500 miles to Timbuktu where it will off-load a
small biofuel production unit with the local MFC charity.
But vehicles using the novel product will not exude the sweet smell of
success. "No! I'm afraid the exhaust doesn't smell of chocolate," said
Pag.
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