The Dung Beetle: A poo-powered eco car

The most recent breakthrough in the drive to encourage sustainable power in cars hasn’t come from the usual Prius or Hybrid, but from a Water company in Bristol. The testing of the new poo powered car has caused quite a stir with the locals, as its being powered by methane from the local sewerage treatment plant.
GENeco, part of Wessex Water, is behind the concept and their experts reckon that the waste flushed down the toilets of 70 homes is enough to power the car for a year. The car still produces C02 (3 tonnes compared to the average cars 3.5 tonnes) but it’s basically carbon neutral as all the C02 would have been released into the atmosphere anyway, in the form of methane.
It’s a clever sustainable idea for utilising the waste product of treating sewerage. In fact, the plant in Bristol produces enough of the stuff to power 9540 of these cars each year. The Dung Beetle is currently only being tested, however if successful, GENeco plans to convert its whole fleet of cars to run on the waste that they treat at their plant.
It’s obviously a great marketing ploy for the company, the tag line ‘powered by your waste!’ quickly connects consumers to the car but the concept behind it really is a right foot forward for businesses who want to become more sustainable. Taking the nasty by-product of its operations and turning it into a carbon neutral fuel, GENeco have created a platform for companies to really start thinking about how they can utilise waste. I am sure other companies will follow suit; Supermarkets could use leftover rotten vegetables to power their home delivery services or pampers could even design a nappy bin that powers a nightlight.
The world is full of ways that companies can take what appears to be waste and turn it into something positive, and who would have thought, that it would be a car powered by poo that led the way!

Long live 'good collaboration'

I’ve always hated businesses collaborating, even when it’s on purely social grounds. In the end I’m a capitalist at heart and whilst it has its problems, it’s not as bad as all the rest. And collaboration fits in the rest. When companies who do similar things get together, whilst on the outside they may look like they create change, the collusion is almost always a stitch up. Yes a stitch up because, as they are not competing with each other so the need to go further disappears, and so the more they talk the more watered down it becomes – and the less change that actually happens.

Take the booze industry. Has all the collaboration of all the drinks manufacturers really optimised what could have been achieved? Well it’s done enough to stave off more regulation, but has it actually worked? Go out to Cardiff city centre on a Friday night and tell me that the responsible drinking message is getting through loud and clear to the public – oh no it isn't!

If each of those businesses had had to find ways to out-do each other in the area of responsible drinking, we would surely be light years ahead. So let's ban all industry collaboration initiatives and watch competition re-enter businesses approach to these issues.

But stop - not so fast - is all collaboration wrong? Absolutely not. In fact collaboration across sectors should be demanded. Whilst it’s great for a single company to want to be sustainable, it’s impossible to be so if no-one else is doing it around you. That doesn't just mean a company's supply chain either (because at least you have more control of that). No, I mean things like if there is poor public transport around your offices how can you persuade your staff out of their cars. Which is why we must all collaborate with any organisation except the ones in your own sector. Water companies and energy companies working together to make more sustainable cities in partnership with local authorities. All have got something to add, something new to help each other - a positive creative way forward.

And perhaps if the Coalition Government is really going to work it should embrace the concept of coalition fully. Let's get groups of people together with lots of divergent experience and see if together we can work out a new way of doing things, that works better, utilises innovation wherever it may come from and costs us all less.

Long live 'good collaboration'.

Not in my back yard

This morning I was listening to the Today Programme on Radio 4 when I heard an interview with a research scientist who was being interviewed about the recent BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Having heard the recent confirmation from US government scientists that this was the world's worst oil spill of all time, I was amazed to hear one of the facts from the research scientist. He stated that if the Gulf of Mexico was scaled down to the size of an Olympic swimming pool and the oil spill was scaled down by the same amount, the oil spill would amount to one gram of oil in that swimming pool. Now that fact does not diminish the impact that the spill has had on the lives of the families of those that were killed in the accident, the fishermen and their families who depend on the coastal fishing industry, and the many that rely on the tourism in the region. It does, however, make one think about the scale and press coverage that this corporate irresponsibility has received in comparison to other corporate irresponsibility - it seems to just depend where in the world it is happening.

The one example that springs to mind is the spills that are taking place on an almost daily basis in the Niger Delta. These may not be one single vast spill like the BP spill, however in cumulation they are huge. The Nigerian government estimates there were over 7,000 spills, large and small, between 1970 and 2000, according to the BBC. That is approximately 300 spills a year, and some spills have been leaking for years. Vast swathes of the Delta are covered with tar and stagnant lakes of crude. By some estimates, over 13 million barrels of oil have spilled into the Delta. That’s the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez spill every year for 40 years, according to The Independent. How often do we hear about what is going on in the Niger Delta - I wonder how many swimming pools these spills would fill.

Now all of this certainly does not belittle what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico, or dim the light of what BP has done. What the spill there has done has raised the issue in everyone's mind because we are all hearing about it - so that must be a good thing. Hopefully the result of this high profile spill will make us all more concious and unaccepting of corporate irresponsibility wherever it is happening in the world.