Don't rubbish Back To The Future inspired journey (From Croydon Guardian)

Don't rubbish Back To The Future inspired journey

4:06pm Tuesday 15th January 2008 in

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A Croydon adventurer is planning to emulate his heroes from the movie Back To The Future by flying to China powered by rubbish.

Andy Pag arrived back in the UK with travelling partner John Grimshaw after driving to Timbuktu in a lorry powered by fuel that began life as chocolate.

Andy is the BioTruck expedition organiser, with more than 12 years experience of running expeditions in Africa and around the world.

Now he is planning his next adventure - driving to China and taking flights in a paraglider using an experimental biofuel made from landfill waste.

“We are always being told that to be green you have to buy the latest gadget but I don’t think we should be so quick to throw things away. There’s still plenty of life in old trucks.”

John Grimshaw

The two men returned from the 5,300 mile drive from the UK to Timbuktu using biodiesel made from waste chocolate, just after Christmas.

The petrolheads made the trip to deliver a biodiesel processing unit to a local charity, Mali Folke Center (MFC), in what was believed to be the first carbon negative expedition.

They took 1,500 litres of biodiesel made from 3,000kg of chocolate misshapes - the equivalent of 10,000 packets of milk chocolate buttons or 1,200 family-sized bars of chocolate.

Along the way the boys had to battle with sand storms, corrupt customs officers and narrowly escaped a shoot out with Al-Qaeda.

Their journey was not made easier by their choice of vehicles, all rescued from scrap yards.

John said: "We are always being told that to be green you have to buy the latest gadget but I don't think we should be so quick to throw things away. There's still plenty of life in old trucks."

The team had to carry out daily roadside repairs for broken headlights, gears, body panels falling off, frozen fuel, wheel blow outs and all manner of engine leaks.

Andy said: "We're not environmentalists at all, we just wanted to do a trip that wouldn't have a detrimental effect on the environment, and the more we learned about biodiesel the more we thought that's how we could do it." The pair arrived in Timbuktu on Boxing Day and now Andy is back in Croydon he is already planning his trip to China - and learning to fly first.