Who Gives A Chip About Global Warming?

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Marius Goubert looks at the thinking behind Bristol's new biodiesel bus, 'The Chipper'.


Climate change and the environment are never far from the headlines. With global warming raising sea levels and huge slabs of ice the size of Manhattan breaking off from the arctic shelf, it seems that in a few years we will all be living like Kevin Costner in Waterworld. So what can be done short of chaining ourselves to the wheels of planes at Heathrow, praying for Captain Planet to take pollution down to zero, or simply facing the fact we all might have to sprout gills and evolve into fish?

One innovative new scheme being piloted by the First bus company throughout Bristol may have the answer. Dubbed ‘The Chipper', a single decked 1998 Dennis dart bus has been designed to run on waste oil left over from fish and chip restaurants. Mckeown - a company which recently won a Sustainable Energy business award - have developed an ingenious way of bonding particular chemicals with the waste oils in order to produce biodiesel capable of running buses.

This bizarre six month trial will see the Chipper traversing the No.73 route through Bristol city centre, passing many of the restaurants whose donation of fatty food oils allow it to run. These include ‘The Bishopston Fish Bar, ‘Taohs Pan Asian' and First's very own canteen, whose logos can be seen covering the Chipper as it makes its way through the city centre. Not only will the Chipper be virtually carbon free, but the amount of carbon monoxide produced when the biodiesel is burnt is hoped to be significantly lower than conventional fuels.

The results of the scheme will be closely monitored by bosses at First, who are confident that this form of low emission biodiesel will have much less of an environmental impact than traditional fuels, and help reduce the company's carbon footprint. If successful, it is possible that one day an entire fleet of Chippers might be seen winding their way through Bristol's streets - their exhausts no longer belching out black smoke, but instead giving off a comforting chippy aroma to bystanders and following cars.

However the Chipper does require a very substantial amount of waste oil to keep itself going - approximately six hundred litres of the bio diesel per week. So for all those environmentally - conscious residents of Bristol out there forget chaining yourself to railings or marching on Whitehall; simply ordering as many fatty takeaways as possibly means you really are doing your bit to stop climate change. Whoever thought going green could be so delicious? First is even calling on people to donate left over cooking fat from their home to local recycling centres to help keep the Chipper topped up with its eco - friendly fuel.

Whether these innovations will translate into any substantial savings for the customers of First is unclear, but given the projects huge potential for money saving, people riding the Chipper will certainly be expecting fares to be - cheap as chips. But hybrid buses of this sort are not a completely new innovation. In London, a city so polluted that, according to some experts, simply living there can take ten years of your life, hybrid buses are already in the process of being rolled out. In fact it is claimed that the entire fleet will consist of hybrids by the year 2012. Although with Boris at the helm all such ambitious predictions sound like hilarious jokes.

Only time will tell what the real pros and cons of the Chipper and hybrid will be. If the scheme was extended by First to their entire fleet then who knows what unforeseen consequences might be lurking. Perhaps over time the whole of Bristol would begin to smell like chips, perhaps a huge cloud of chip vapour would begin to form in the upper atmosphere and huge greasy globules of fat would begin raining down on the population. But then again, that would stop us worrying about the polar ice caps melting.

However, the project has huge potential and could have a massive impact on carbon emissions on a national, or even, an international level. After all, Bristol is a city which is closely linked the London in terms of emissions. They are connected by the ‘global conveyer belt' of pollution as it is referred to, which is basically a sort of Gulf Stream of dangerous gases which carries pollutants out of London and Westwards to cities like Bristol, and even some scientists claim, as far afield as Asia.

So who knows what sort of miracles this could lead to? Might we see this scheme eventually extended to buses all over the nation, or perhaps even the globe? Could the British nation's classic trademark dish of fish and chips end up being responsible for saving us all from climate change? If so, then everyone will have to eat a lot more junk food, but if that is really what it takes to save the world, at least we no longer have to feel guilty about it.

Marius Goubert is a freelance writer with his eye on Bristol and beyond.


The views expressed are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Guide2Bristol.