14 DAY TRIAL // A couple of days ago, on Thursday, a so-called poo-powered bus made its public debut in the city of Bristol in England, UK. The 40-seater, known as the Bio-Bus, is the first of its kind ever to take to the road in this corner of the world.
As surprising as this may sound, word has it that folks in Bristol expect the poo-powered bus will help improve local air quality. That's right, we're dealing with a bus that runs on waste but that promises to help clean the air. Intriguing, right?
It's not powered by what we flush down the toilet per se
Mind you, the 40-seater does run on human waste. Still, this does not mean that its engine has been replaced with a toilet or anything of the sorts. As detailed by Click Green, the vehicle actually runs on gas obtained by processing human and food waste.
The company in charge of doing all this processing goes by the name GENeco. In case anyone was wondering, GENeco is a subsidiary of Wessex Water. Earlier this week, the company became the first ever to inject gas obtained from food and human waste into the country's grid.
Around the same time this happened, GENeco cut the ribbon on the gas refueling station currently in charge of keeping the Bio-Bus up and running. According to company's general manager, the gas that made it into the grid and that is now powering the bus is biomethane.
“Through treating sewage and food thats unfit for human consumption we're able to produce enough biomethane to provide a significant supply of gas to the national gas network that's capable of powering almost 8,500 homes as well as fueling the Bio-Bus,” Mohammed Saddiq said in a statement.
“Gas powered vehicles have an important role to play in improving air quality in UK cities, but the Bio-Bus goes further than that and is actually powered by people living in the local area, including quite possibly those on the bus itself,” he added.
Just how cool is the poo-powered Bio-Bus?
It is understood that the bus can cover a distance of about 300 kilometers (186 miles) on a single tank of gas. According to the folks behind GENeco, this gas can be obtained by processing the waste produced by about 5 people throughout the course of an entire year.
Interestingly enough, it is said that, were the company to process the yearly waste of just one group of passengers, the bus would easily make it from Land Ends, a headland and holiday complex in western Cornwall, all the way to the village of John o' Groats in Scotland, and then back again.
When it made its public debut this past Thursday, the Bio-Bus carried passengers from the Bristol Airport all the way to the historic city of Bath. For the time being, the eco-friendly 40-seater is operated by the Bath Bus Company.
