I went as a European election candidate last night to a fascinating presentation at South Bank University's 'Green Drink' where a number of cutting edge companies involved in sustainable issues told some of the academics there, along with those involved in the construction industry about what they are up to. I also had an ulterior motive in going as I wanted to make contact with Uptown Oil as the Green Party's campaign bus, which will be going through London on Friday and Saturday of next week (May 29th and 30th) is going to be powered by some of their products, and I wanted to make contact with the company. Not being of a scientific bent, this is not usually the sort of event I would attend, but I found it fascinating and it is green, sustainable and furthermore makes economic sense.
The company is a small one and their base is in Southwark near the Elephant & Castle. What they are working on is the fact that recycled biodiesel offers a very low carbon alternative to fossil diesel. Uptown Oil recycle London's used cooking oil into high grade biodiesel for use in a wide variety of industrial and commercial applications. Recycled biodiesel is cheaper and better in urban use and is helping to achieve cleaner city air for London. And it certainly needs it with air pollution currently way above EU limits, resulting in the death of thousands each year.
The company has already persuaded many London taxis to switch to biodiesel and is currently looking at persuading major constuction sites to do so also. As they pointed out, many of these sites have thousands of workers and have catering facilities using large amounts of cooking oil. Currently most of this oil is sent to landfill sites, resulting in large amounts of methane being released into the atmosphere, which is even more harmful than CO2 as far as being a greenhouse gas is concerned.
The statistics are staggering. Wembley Stadium, for instance, uses 1 tonne of waste per day. The oil the company uses is biodegradable and non-toxic. Cooking oil is also 13 times less polluting than gasoline and could result in a massive decrease in the use of fossil fuels in the capital. Less than 0.1% of London's cooking oil is currently being used for fuel. Some of it is sold on by shady dealers and some goes to India for the cosmetics industry. But most just ends up in landfill sites. Uptown make the very good point that Diesel originally invented his engine to be run on peanut oil but the petrochemical industry managed to subvert that.
There is no connection here by the way with biofuels, to which the company is opposed, as are the Greens. So, as they pointed out, there is no large scale use of land in developing countries and consequent shipping with all the carbon footprint which that implies. This is a good example of a small green company who are doing their bit for the environment. They are also convinced that all of London's traffic could be run on biodiesel. Their website is here and I hope to meet them again when the campaign bus fuels up next week.
At the end of the session I met someone from another green company called Courier Systems, who run a carbon neutral outfit,who revealed to me that he was a member of the Green Party. The South Bank University is opening a major new alternative energy centre next year and I hope to keep in touch with developments there. So an educational and inspiring presentation and I rushed off to a meeting of the London Green Party to spread the good news, and to discuss the opinion polls which demonstrate that things may be moving our way for the European elections. But as Neil Kinnock once found out - it aint over till the fat lady sings!
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