Eco Factor: Ethanol generated from throwaway coffee cups.
Researchers at the University of Manitoba seem eager reduce our dependence on food crops for biofuel production. They have decided to squeeze biofuel out of the most unlikely products, until now best left for recycling and reuse: Tim Horton’s discarded coffee cups. Microbiologists Richard Sparling and David Levin collected the throwaway coffee cups and turned them into mulch resembling cotton candy from which ethanol is produced, a biofuel which can be mixed with conventional fuels or used by itself. It takes about 100 Tim Horton cups to generate 1.3 liters of ethanol (about 0.3 gallons).
Via: Treehugger
