Guest Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 Anyone seen this? Taken from yahoo. ATHENS (Reuters) - Fuelled only by used cooking fat, eight teams completed a 2,500-mile car rally from London to Athens on Wednesday in a bid to promote awareness of cheap and environmentally-friendly bio-fuels. (Advertisement)The "Grease to Greece" race, the brainchild of 34-year-old Londoner Andy Pag, took the teams on a 10-day mission across Europe in which they begged oil to fuel their cars from restaurants, motorway cafes and fast-food joints along the way. "There is no reason why Joe Public cannot do this, save themselves a bit of money and help the environment because they are not using fossil fuels," Pag said. The race ended on Wednesday with a ceremony at the British Embassy in Athens where Ambassador Simon Gass presented a Golden Lard award to the team which had earned the most "Grease Marks" for collecting fuel. Unlike expensive conventional rallies such as the Paris-Dakar, Pag paid only 500 British pounds for his second-hand Peugeot 405 and spent nothing on fuel since leaving London -- saving the equivalent of what he paid for the car. An experienced eco-traveller, Pag drove to the desert town of Timbuktu in Mali last year using a truck powered by waste chocolate. His next scheme is a round-the-world trip next year using aviation fuel made from recycled plastic bags. Racers received a warm welcome from most restauranteurs. "Whenever people have had oil they have been really, really willing to give it. It's a waste product for them so we are taking away their rubbish," Pag told Reuters. The competitors in the race included a policeman, several engineers, farmers, a film editor, and an accountant. Farmers Coleen and Mario Chadwick drove to Athens in their unconverted Range Rover, using used cooking oil sieved through kitchen equipment. They plan to keep driving on cooking oil from their local primary school once they return to England. Pag's red Peugeot was converted to run on cooking oil using an kit produced by Britain's Regenatec. "Demand for this technology is rocketing," said Adrian Hensen, whose company sells bio-fuel equipment. "With petrol prices so high, lots of people are looking for ways to reduce their fuel bills and this is a fantastic way to do it." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 Selfishly I don't want to see this idea promoted at all, as it's a finite resource...However I guess most of the general public can't be arsed going around collecting waste veg oil and like it easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitevanman Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 not sure I'd say it was finite, but it is replacable, you can grow more rapeseed, but we cant wait millions of years for a load of trees to petrify and decay into oil, and overall its better for the planet than draining every drop of oil out and to shove our waste into the holes we take the oil from...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.welfare Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 But the land you can grow rapeseed on is finite, and it's when rapeseed replaces conventional (food) crops on said land that you get into this ethical argument that's currently raging.Fair play to those who have a free source of used oil and the storage/capability to filter it - I don't/can't so occasionally buy new in 20L drums, but given it's not much cheaper than DERV plus the hassle factor I haven't done so for a long while now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 not sure I'd say it was finite, but it is replacable, you can grow more rapeseed.Nah, I'm saying that waste veg oil is a finite resource, especially with commercial biodiesel producers lapping a lot of it up, and telling lies in order to get it. Have you tried the KTC 15l drums of cooking oil from the larger Tescos r.welf? They work out at 97p/l which is a reasonable saving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.welfare Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 I'm pretty sure it is slightly cheaper than that from Costco - £17-£18 for 20L - but I still haven't done anything about getting a suitable pump, so I have to decant the sod into a 5L jerry can then slug it in the car's tank, which invariably leads to a lashing of Mazola on the drive and my shoes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SYPHON-PUMP-PETRO ... 0291891737I have a couple of these, a bit slow but OK for the money and keeps you clean! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r.welfare Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 Aha, that looks good! I bought a stirrup pump-type thing and it was rubbish, kept falling apart. That looks as though it would also be useful for filling gearboxes etc if the hoses are narrow enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 Didn't think of using them for filling gearbox oil. The tip of the hose is narrow enough I reckon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
55bloke Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 A truck powered by waste chocolate? Aviation fuel from recycled plastic bags? Er, is someone taking the piss? I wonder if you can run a car on that!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 I wonder whether the participants of this rally further contributed to the environment by depositing their cars in the car park of Athens International Airport afterwards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 Plastic is made from oil, so I suppose they could make fuel out of it. I've never heard of it before though.I wonder whether the participants of this rally further contributed to the environment by depositing their cars in the car park of Athens International Airport afterwards.What is that a dig at? I've heard it a few times from you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 It's a situation I have pondered before, a lot of the more "wacky" charity banger rally cars don't seem to return to the UK afterwards. It could be a bit of a ballache to scrap a car in a foreign country - finding a scrapyard, not being stuck behind another 50 zany/doomed cars whilst your cheap return flight looms ever closer, the cost of a taxi back to the airport, etc.Therefore I wonder whether the airports at random European capitals have to put up with a load of toss handpainted cars dumped in their car parks on a weekly basis. It would be especially funny in this case, but probably unlikely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Milford Cubicle Posted August 28, 2008 Share Posted August 28, 2008 I think that rather than being a zany charity rally where people buy reliable but cheap cars, cover them in fur, and think that travelling a few hundred miles into Europe is a mega adventure, these 'Grease' types were using their own daily motors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew e Posted September 4, 2008 Share Posted September 4, 2008 It used to be the case airports were dumping grounds, I was a passenger in a mondeo 3 uears ago that was left with the keys still in it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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