Evergreen Online

The Newsletter of Wirral Environmental Network

May - July 2005

1. Choking: EU pollution deaths cost billions.

2. Oil's Well Again. The Veg Oil Car; part two.

3. 52 Weeks To Change Your World: Book review by Dave Kibberd.

Choking

The European Union could save up to 161 billion euros a year by reducing deaths caused by air pollution, the World Health Organisation has said.

Air pollution reduces the life of the average European by 8.6 months.The toxic particles in pollution increase deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and the price of treating these ailments is costly.

However, EU plans to cut pollution by 2010 should on average save 2.3 months of life for each European, WHO says. This is the equivalent of preventing 80,000 premature deaths and saving over one million years of life across the European Union.

"Measures to reduce the effects of air pollution on health and extend life expectancy already exist and work," said Dr Marc Danzon, WHO Regional Director for Europe. "The data presented today emphasise that health damage due to particulate matter (PM) exposure, its costs for European society, and the ability of the current European legislation to reduce this impact, are critical arguments for continuing efforts to reduce air pollution."

Transport and the use of fossil fuels in homes are the major contributors to air pollution. Diesel is a particular culprit, providing a hefty chunk of all polluting particles. Although each country is responsible for much of its own pollution, winds and weather systems mean they also get an unhealthy dose from other countries.

"The transboundary nature of PM pollution requires that all countries take measures that will benefit the European population," said Roberto Bertollini, Director of the Special Programme on Health and Environment, WHO.

WHO says plans to manage air quality at the local, regional and national levels need to be integrated. Cutting traffic at the local level may help reduce the exposure of people living in pollution hotspots, but will not help the society as a whole.

It suggests that people across Europe rely less heavily on motorised transport and instead take trains, cycle or walk. People's attitudes need to change, WHO says, and we all need to nurture a commitment to clean air. WHO and the European Commission are working together in a new long-term strategy known as Clean Air for Europe (CAFE).

Links:
www.who.int/en
www.liverpool.gov.uk/Environment/Air_quality

We could hardly wait for our next car journey but didn’t go out in it immediately – partly due to our 3 year old’s passion for trains and buses but also because we are aware that simply running the car on veg oil is not the ideal solution to transport problems.

When we did get it going we were surprised that the performance was actually better with around 40% veg oil than on diesel alone. We had been prepared to accept a drop in performance because of the environmental advantages but were pleased to discover that it was better. (Most diesels can already run on a mixture provided they have a Bosch injection pump.)

Filtering
The filtering of the waste oil is probably the biggest issue to contend with. Whether you are installing a conversion kit or running on a blend you need to have clean oil filtered, preferably to no more than 5 microns. Sedimentation, sieving and / or reusable pre-filters are required to avoid clogging the finer filters too quickly. Temperature is important during filtering as below 9 degrees vegetable oil becomes very viscous and results in poor filtering flow and wasted oil. If the oil has been used to cook sausages etc, the fat from these forms a thick slurry in the oil at lower temperatures, and will block even a kitchen sieve, and this is where the mess and waste starts.

Inspired by our example, we are lucky that my father is now also running his Peugeot 405 on veg oil. He is doing his own conversion using parts from the breakers. We have had many long and interesting phone calls about the ins and outs of filters and technical instruments that I confess to never having heard of.
Many new issues keep arising that require consideration, for example the quality of the oil received. His supplier fries chips separately from meaty things, and the chip oil is perfect for winter use, whereas the fatty stuff should be alright in the summer when the temperature is above 14C when it forms a clear solution.

There many ways to filter oil but aside from the technical considerations bear in mind in the planning stages how messy each process is likely to be. Minimal wastage within the production facility is the aim. That includes not getting covered in oil and then wiping it all over your clothes, children and house. Since my dad’s involvement, the process is becoming considerably more scientific and in future hopefully a lot less messy. (Not being a fan of cleaning, the sharp increase in oily handprints around the place was not over welcome).

Fuel Tax
If you use a substance to fuel an engine, that substance must be taxed and the monies sent to the Customs And Excise. Currently 47.1p of the litre pump price of diesel is collected by the customs and excise from the producer.

The first stage is to get the relevant C&E information booklets. These can be obtained by calling the (pretty useful) Customs National Advice Service on 0845 010 9000. There are two booklets that may be of use 179E ‘Biodiesel and Bioblend’ which deals with the production of fuel from waste veg oil. And Booklet 179F, ‘Fuel Substitutes’, which deals with the use of non-waste veg oil as a fuel.

The reason for the distinction is that ‘Fuel substitutes’ will attract the same level of tax as the fuel it is replacing. For example going to the cash and carry to get clean oil would be levied the same as diesel.

The act of recycling waste oil (or any Biodiesel or Bioblend) into a fuel attracts a 20p per litre reduction. The rationale being that the waste would have to be disposed of and this would most likely be at the expense of the Treasury.

By recycling the waste you are helping to reduce it and so are entitled to a reduction in duty. (In other European countries this is duty free). It is useful to know that the C&E almost exclusively deal with companies and not private individuals. The booklet says you need to ask for and fill in form EX103A, which is the form for a company. The form for a private individual is EX103. So when asking the advice line for the form, make absolutely sure you are getting the EX103 and not EX103A (unless you are a company of course).

The form requires you to describe how you will produce your Biodiesel, to the point that you need to draw diagrams. If you are too vague on your application they decide that they don’t believe you and thus they will class you as a fuel substitute user and want 47.1p per litre.
The C&E are almost impossible to argue with as they are an institution where you have to prove your innocence rather than they prove your guilt. So it pays to have thought carefully about your filtering strategy before submitting, especially as the C&E will come to your house to check.

Once registered they send you a form every month where you record how much fuel you have produced, the tax due and return it with a cheque. There isn’t as yet an automated way of performing this task, but they say they are working on it. Fortunately sorting out the duty is much easier than it may sound, particularly if you start with the right forms. Once you get in the habit of sending the form off each month it is not a big deal.

Supply
Unfortunately there is not as much waste cooking oil being disposed of in this country as we had believed when writing the previous article. However we are still pleased to be using something that is difficult to dispose of otherwise, and often would go to landfill, and to be avoiding the use of fossil fuels. Anybody knowing of cooking oil being disposed of, particularly chip-only oil please contact rosie@wirren.org.uk

Insurance
Insurance was something we originally gave only a cursory thought to, but we did check we would still be covered under our existing policy before carrying out the conversion. Therefore we were dismayed when they sang a different tune after the conversion was done – they cancelled our policy and had no record of having confirmed to us that it would be allowed. Having worked in a call centre myself I could understand the employee not wanting to be bothered with anything out of the ordinary and just fobbing us off with “yeah yeah it’ll be fine” but it left us in a sticky situation – 3 days away from the due date of our second baby and no car insurance! “How are we going to get to the maternity ward?” If we weren’t so annoyed it would have been quite funny.

Hours and hours and many companies later (when I would have preferred to be re-arranging sets of bootees and baby-gros) and we still had no insurance. I got put on hold for ages while each person hunted for their boss to ask if they could cover a car running on veg oil as a fuel. The irony of course being that it is safer than diesel – I mean it’s just cooking oil for goodness’ sake!

The array of responses ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous: “no I’m afraid that won’t work madam” – well actually it’s outside in the drive and runs fine. “Of course we can’t insure that, it’s illegal!” Some of them were very interested and said what a good idea they thought it was but most of the time the answer was an outright no, so with time running short we decided to take the only quote we had. However when we called back to accept it, they too had changed their minds.

Finally we twigged that we needed to use the term ‘bio-diesel’ instead of ‘veg oil’. Bio-diesel can mean not only the 5% new rape seed oil derivative mixed with diesel that is available at some petrol stations but also pure veg oil. This causes much confusion but is classified under the same heading by HM Customs & Excise so it should be good enough for insurance purposes too! In fact on our V5 form it says only ‘heavy oil’ under fuel type.

Once we had explained this they began to treat us like human beings again, albeit with a great deal of faffing and unnecessary paperwork but at least we were covered. And we needn’t have worried – the baby was over two weeks late anyway!

Next article covers the installation of the conversion kit plus running on 100% waste vegoil.

For example: week 39 “ say goodbye to cheese on toast and cappuccino…” Take a look at the title of this and you think you have to give them up when in fact it actually indicates about the amount of pollution (high nitrate levels) which the agricultural sector pumps in to fresh water supplies within the UK.

It tells you what steps you can personally take to lower these amounts by using products such as soya milk and olive oil spreads and even vegan ice-cream. It also gives you a number of relevant internet addresses to each subject, although some areas have more info than others.

Another example: week 1 “use good design to beat global warming….” This being the first of the 52 weeks, it starts by encouraging you to change from high-powered heat wasting light bulbs (design hasn’t changed for nearly 100 years) to more environmentally friendly low heat long life bulbs.

It also states that normal bulbs are one cause of global warming increasing Co2 levels. All relevant internet addresses for how to get energy saving light bulbs are listed at the end of this “week”.

This book and the one reviewed in the last EG are just two of the growing number of books available for loan from our library. The full catalogue is available to download from our website.

52 Weeks To Change Your World by Allan Shepherd and Caroline Oakley is published by The Centre For Alternative Technology (ISBN 1-90217-518-2). It is priced at £4.99