"alternative fuel" news and stories

Pizza, that inexpensive, staple food of students and late night revelers, is about to get a little more expensive. Pizza shops and other businesses that use a lot of flour are feeling the pinch of rising prices and are starting to pass those costs along to the consumers. According to a report on Philadelphia's NBC10, in addition to being effected by rising fuel costs, flour prices are also going up as farmers plant corn in place of wheat in order to meet the demands of alternative fuel manufacturers.

Pizza will still remain relatively inexpensive, with slice prices going up in $.25 and $.50 increments. Whole pie might run you a buck or two more than they did in the past.

[via NBC10]

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In case you needed another reason to love chocolate, here it is: you can drive your car with it!

Well, OK, maybe not your car (not yet anyway), but these guys drove from the UK to Timbuktu using the "waste chocolate" from a chocolate manufacturer. They left the UK on November 26 and got to Timbuktu in about a month. The group, Ecotec, donated (and delivered) one of their biodiesel production units to a charity in Timbuktu.

Now that's alternative fuel. I wonder if we can get cars to drive on Yodels or maybe Funyuns?

[via Boing Boing]

Robert Tomey, a McDonald's franchisee owner, has put his leftover french fry grease to a good use: fueling his car. His stores, he says, produce about 10,000 gallons of excess oil each year and, after having a simple conversion performed on his car, he now has more than enough to get wherever he's going. In fact, Tomey says that 20-30 cars could be powered by that amount of oil. The grease is processed in a way similar to regular diesel fuel.

And Tomey is not the only one who does this. His conversion kit was purchased at Grease Car. Their conversion kits can cost up to approximately $2,000 and their emissions statistics are intended to provide potential consumers with an idea of how they'll be helping the environment if they convert a diesel car to run on vegetable oil. There seem to be many people who have successfully converted their cars, so it is possible we may see even more of them in the future, especially if McDonald's began to recommend this as an option to their franchisees, since it does seem like a great use for leftover grease.

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