The latest innovation in alternative energy is oat fuel.
I read the first line of this article at SmartPlanet – and my heart fell. Porridge is a staple food, and worldwide we’re already in enough trouble from producing bio-ethanol from food. Moreover, I love porridge, so the thought of my breakfast being sacrificed (and my cholesterol along with it) to keep cars on the road makes me selfishly indignant. Besides, I don’t drive.
Happily, oat fuel is a good kind of biofuel, i.e. power generated from waste products. Porridge producer Quaker (who else?) will be using waste oat husks to generate heat and electricity for its factory in Scotland, and in the process will be saving 9,000 tonnes of C02 from being emitted and preventing 172,000 road miles being racked up in hauling the husks away.
It’s the only kind of waste management that makes sense in the long run – and it’s furnishing the recycling industry with the tools and technologies it’ll need to tackle a bigger issue. On both sides of the Atlantic, consumers are throwing away mountains of perfectly edible food! The sooner this food is reclaimed and turned back into energy, the better – and the safer our breakfasts will be.
Goldilocks unavailable for comment. I, on the other hand, have just made myself hungry.
Image: jslander