I’ve been reading a lot of alternative energy news lately. Some of it optimistic and others full of gloom and doom. So I decided to write about one of the humorous stories in the news.
In Kilmarnock, people have been given bottles to fill with used cooking oil. Each bottle returned filled gets them bus ticket vouchers. The used cooking oil is then transformed into biodiesel and put in those same buses filled with people using bus ticket vouchers.
Right now the people have to go to the recycling plant to drop off the used oil. That seems a little ridiculous that they probably have to drive there to drop it off. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have each bus have its own little seat reserved for bottles of oil and as each one goes back to its garage, or to any central location on the bus routes, the oil is dropped off to be taken as a group to the recycling plant.
I can see these British housewives from some kind of Monty Python/Benny Hill skit all carrying their bottles filled with bacon fat, fish & chips oil, and any other kind of grease used to cook the famous British cuisine. But there are enough of them that 8 buses run on their biodiesel cutting CO2 emissions by 82%.
Can you imagine that much oil being collected in your hometown? I wonder what the participation rate is. I wonder what the bus exhaust smells like? In the US, it smells like fries; does it smell like fish in the UK?
That sense of community and that level of involvement seems more like a noble goal to strive for than all of the energy it saves. I wonder what it is like to be in such a place where you willingly help your neighbors, even those you never see, not because it is easy, and it may even be difficult, but because it is the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do. The only way to be.
As that sense of community increases, so will participation in any volunteer effort and everyone purchases will start to make more sense. Why is anyone buying a Hummer now? It hurts everyone to buy and use those monstrosities. I don’t understand that level of selfishness, but it is worse than selfishness. It is a way to hurt others and show them up and represent that you are so important that the rules others follow don’t apply to you.
If you can make the kind of money to pay for a Hummer, and to pay for the gas to fill it weekly, then you must be smart enough to understand the turmoil around us. The price of oil is affecting your investments. Global warming is threatening your beach condo. Join the community. Please. We need you.
