So, Can You Expect to be Followed Around by Hungry Cats and Monkeys?

[Tuckerfan]

Biodiesel made from fish oil.

ish oils are about to start fuelling six City of Moncton vehicles.

The city’s pilot project, expected to last into next winter, will see six vehicles in the city fleet gas up with biodiesel, an alternative fuel made from a fish oil biofuel combined with regular diesel.

“It’s an opportunity, where it’s sold retail in the city,” says fleet supervisor John Ivany. “It’s to benefit the environment. It just makes sense.”

The six city vehicles selected for the trial represent a cross-section of the different types of diesel vehicles found in the fleet.

Coconut powered biodiesel.

With oil prices rising virtually every week, every peso saved on alternative fuels is a peso earned. One such alternative is CME, which Filipinos scientists have developed to tap one of the country’s abundant, renewal and more environment-friendly resources, coconuts.

CME, in fact, stands for coconut methyl ester—and where better to propagate its use than in Romblon? Long known for its marble, this island province off southwestern Luzon is actually one of the biggest producers and exporters of coconuts in the Philippines.

In other provinces, where coconut production is not as high, CME might not be a practical alternative to diesel fuel—not yet, anyway. In those places, producing CME would be more expensive than trucking or shipping diesel fuel from depots in and around Metro Manila. But Romblon has the comparative advantage of a huge regular production of coconuts. On one of its islands alone, Tablas, some 720,000 coconuts are harvested daily, officials said.

Coconut prices, however, are notorious for their wild fluctuations. On a good season, prices range from P16 to P20 a kilo of copra—but prices do fall to as low as P4 when demand for the produce plummets.

[carnivorousplant]

So how much diesel does it take to run the crank to pull the nets and drive the boat that drags the nets that catch the fish?