Certainly when it comes to biofriendly fuel, this would be one of the greenest.  This TreeHugger article talks about the Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii, the botanical name for the diesel tree.

The diesel tree, which can grow around 30 meters tall, produces and stores a natural diesel in its unusual capillary structure.  The diesel can be extracted by tapping into the tree, in a way similar to the extraction of natural latex from the rubber tree. 

The diesel tree can continue to produce the natural diesel for around seventy years and apparently does not require a complicated refining process – it can be filtered and put straight into a diesel vehicle.  The drawback is that it needs to be used within 3 months after extraction – that, and it’s a tropical rainforest tree.  So if you drive a diesel, live in a tropical rainforest, know how to tap the natural fuel from the tree and have a good filter – then you’re set.  Add some Green Plus to the tank and you have yourself one hellova biofriendly vehicle!

According to the article, one hectare of diesel trees will yield about 12,000 litres of natural diesel per year.  I don’t know how far the diesel tree will go in greening up mother earth, but it sounds wonderfully biofriendly.  Now, if only we could find that tree our parents said didn’t exist – the tree that money grows on!

Now this is the kind of environmental story I like to hear. According to a Reuters article, a new process has been developed that turns chocolate-making waste into a biofuel.

On November 26, a truck using the biofuel will set out on a charity mission, from Poole on the English south coast to Mali in West Africa. The 4,500-mile journey is expected to take around 3 weeks.

English company Ecotech, has used the waste produced from the chocolate manufacturing process and turned it into bio-ethanol, which, when mixed with vegetable oil produces bio-diesel.

“This is to show that you can have environmentally friendly bio-fuels and that you don’t have to convert normal diesel engines to use it,” said Andy Pag who will be one of the drivers for the charity mission.

So it turns out chocolate isn’t such a wicked vice after all. I mean, how wicked can it really be when all you want to do is help save the planet! OK, that might be a wee bit over the top, but certainly that moment on the lips won’t carry with it such tremendous guilt. Of course, that moment on the lips, unfortunately, is a lifetime on the hips as the saying goes. But not to worry, ditch the car where you can and walk it off – that makes it a double dose of goodness for the environment.

What a wonderful reason to enjoy the creamy goodness of melt-in-your-mouth chocolate!