Food Waste and Poop: How to Ride a Bus Into the Future

With all the foods we’re cramming into our bodies, we might as well make the most of the waste we’re producing. Why not a poop bus? The UK currently has a bus running between Bristol Airport and Bath city center that’s powered by food waste and human feces. Poo.

The Bio Bus is fueled by biomethane gas, produced through decomposed organic matter or animal and human byproducts. The bus can travel up to 186 miles on a single tank of fuel, which is roughly a year’s worth of bowel movements for five people. Possibly three people with a bean burrito-heavy diet.

You don’t have to hold your breath, however, as the fuel has had its impurities stripped leaving behind a “virtually odorless” emission. With the gas tanks on the roof of the bus, it’s pretty much as stinky as any other regular form of public transportation.

Biomethane gas is known to reduce greenhouse emissions by 88 percent when stacked against gasoline. It’s pretty much the same as a natural gas as it utilizes fresh matter rather than decomposed.

Renewable gas, as a whole, is becoming a more common form of fuel. While the US uses Biomethane gas on a smaller scale, European countries like Sweden and Germany use it a fair amount, according to the US Department of Energy. A quarter of Germany’s natural gas stations dispense Biomethane as fuel, while 38,500 of Sweden’s vehicles utilize the same.

The future is poo.

h/t Mashable