One day the kids in Gunning eat fish and chips from the local café, the next they’re travelling to school on a bus running on the same oil that cooked their dinner the night before.
Gunning engineer, Ned Stojadinovic, creates biodiesel in his shed from the waste oil created by the Old Hume Café in the town and for over a year it has been filling the tank of the local school bus.
“Deep fryers change their oil once a week. Why would you want to buy oil, give it away then buy diesel?” Mr Stojadinovic said at a presentation in Gunning on Thursday.
The bus owner runs the bus on 30 per cent biodiesel and the rest as regular diesel. However, Mr Stojadinovic said he runs his vehicle with 100 per cent of the natural fuel.
The engineer said the greatest thing about the fuel, apart from the fact it was better for the environment, was that it only costs 30 cents per litre to create.
“It is after all a waste product and the world is swimming with the stuff, so it is both environmentally conscious and easy to get hold of,” he said.
The use of the fuel in the bus has saved 18 tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
“One litre of diesel produces some 2.4 kg of carbon. The Gunning school bus uses around 160 litres of fuel per week over about 40 weeks of operation per year. That’s 15,360 kg of carbon or around 15 and a third tonnes,” Mr Stojadinovic said.
At the presentation last week the engineer suggested Upper Lachlan councillors think about running all council vehicles on biodiesel. Although he said school buses would be a good start.
The engineer said there would be minimal effort in running all school buses in the area on biodiesel.
“The effort would be trivial. All of the work has been done and the expense would be insignificant,” he said. “Simply enlarging my plant and fitting fuel heaters to the buses would make them 100 per cent bio burners.”
He said it could create a booming business in the town, which could harness the oil created by canola farms in the area.
“The system is to simply ‘hire’ the oil to the various greasy spoons and retrieve it for processing when it is changed out of the deep fryers. The cooperative would thus have oil, meal and very cheap biodiesel as products.”
How locals can contribute
A local asked Mr Stojadinavic how families could help, could they take their left over cooking oils to the engineer to help run the bus?
He said he would be happy to have any waste oils from families and was contemplating setting up a canister at the tip to collect it.
“Basically if you can eat it we can use it,” he said.
In stead of finding a place to dispose of the oil in the garden or tipping it down the sink, families might one day be able to take it to the tip with the rest of their waste.
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