The guys over at Cadbury Schweppes have been tossing a lot of their sugary waste. Being nice guys, they figured they should try to do something with this garbage nougat and caramel. So they started feeding it to this itty-bitty bug, and the itty-bitty bug not only ate the waste, but it generated the holy grail of modern energy tech: hydrogen. They dumped the hydrogen in a fuel cell, let it mix with oxygen in the normal way, and poof, electricity! (Feed me caramel and it has a similar result, but there's not enough of me to solve the entire planetary energy shortage.) (via Treehugger)
The potential for this bug is absolutely gargantuan, and the team leader, Professor Lynne Macaskie of the University of Birmingham’s School of Biosciences, says it could be powering cars within 5-10 years. That sounds like a while, but when the science guys start saying how something could happen and say it's likely to be within my cat's lifetime, it's worth taking notice. Usually those guys speak in tectonic terms. [GT]
From: BEST OF 2008: Eco-friendy and sustainable shoes