Greenpeace Blog

Bio-diesel: green fuel we can use today

Take some rapeseed, sunflower or soya oil, or recycle some used cooking oil, refine, mix with a diesel engine and voila! A non-toxic, biodegradable green fuel that can be used in any diesel engine.

Although the plant-based fuel is not pollution-free, it is significantly cleaner than its petro equivalent and causes just half the damage to the climate. Its widely used in the US, Germany and France, so why isn't the UK enjoying the environmental, economic and health benefits too?

As many parts of Britain lie under flood water, the relationship that these bouts of extreme weather have with fossil fuel pollution can no longer be separated. With more than 3000 homes and key transport networks falling foul of the flood waters, the answer can only be to change our ways, leaving coal and oil behind. If we don't, grab those sandbags because it's going to get worse.

So what? you cry, I can whip out my dinghy and pop down the local. Fun and community spirited it may be, but what many of us don't know are the underlying costs that these climatic changes have. In 1999, insurance claims wieghed in at a hefty 860 million, and this Autumn's stormy weather has already reached 500million, just think what is going to happen to your premium!

Before the Government decided it needed to set up a Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, three reports into safety operations by BNFL at Sellafield nuclear plant were published today by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate in February 2000.

They cover:
 

In 1979, three years before the historic moratorium decision, the IWC agreed to an Indian Ocean sanctuary. Fifteen years later, in 1994, Greenpeace was instrumental in securing an additional sanctuary in the Southern Ocean which covers all the waters around Antarctica, so ensuring that there can never be legal whaling again in the feeding grounds of three quarters of the world's whales.