The Compost Bin

Image via Wikipedia Compost never ceases to amaze me. It looks like scientists have discovered that a bug that's commonly found in compost can be used to help the biofuel making process become more efficient.

Normally corn or sugar cane is broken down by yeast, into small forms of sugar that can be fermented when making traditional ethanol. But with the help of this compost bug, they believe that they'll be able to use grass, forest waste and other non-food items and do it more efficiently that ever before.

Since I'm a blogger with zero journalism experience, I'd like to use this part of this post to speculate and dream of how this news will effect things. No reason to just report the facts, when I can voice my opinions too.

Lets jump ahead 10 years for a moment and imagine what this could mean to automobiles of the future. Do you remember the Mr. Fusion that Doc Brown mounted on his Delorean at the end of Back to the Future? if I remember correctly, he went through the garbage and found a banana peel and some beer and dumped them into the device. Then the Delorean was all fueled up and ready to take Marty back to the future.

Well instead of Mr. Fusion, we could be fueling our cars with a Mr. Compost. Fusion sounds a little too, radioactive to have in your car but compost would be a lot safer. Ideally you would just throw some food waste into the tank, and then the onboard biofuel making stuff happens and you've got your ethanol. Ta-da!

Well it might take longer than 10 years for this to happen so someone should get working on this on right away. And if any of my biofuel industry readers need a spokesman, feel free to give me a call.

Composting in the future is going to be cool.