Truck Runs From U.K. to Timbuktu on Chocolate

No, the truck was not running on a river of silky smooth chocolate, but rather ran on biodiesel made from “waste chocolate” (which seems like an oxymoron if ever there was one). Adventurers and “petrolheads” Andy Pag and John Grimshaw took four weeks to drive more than  5,000 miles in a 1989 Ford Iveco Cargo with the goal of making the entire trip carbon negative, meaning they didn’t create any pollution. The journey took them from their home in the United Kingdom to Timbuktu in the West African country of Mali.

The pair saw an opportunity to prove that not only could they make such a journey on alternative fuel, but that fancy new technology is not always necessarily the key to going green. They salvaged the aging European Ford from a scrapyard to prove that recycling is still a key element for environmental progress. They hoped to point out that cars and trucks that people consider nearly dead can still have a lot of miles left in them.

Pag and Grimshaw left the truck in Mali, along with a biodiesel production unit, so that local women can recycle their used cooking oil into bio-fuel. For their next endeavor, the two newly converted eco-activists want to fly to China using a carbon-neutral fuel made from landfill waste. While this is also pretty cool, we’d rather ride the “Chocolate Truck” than the “Garbage Plane.”

Chocolate Biodiesel Experience (Practical Environmentalist via BoingBoing)