Chris Borrowman, meet Yuanhui Zhang. Chris is a pork producer in Illinois and he has a lagoon in his backyard the size of about 23 swimming pools that is filled with pig crap. Yuanhui is a professor at the University of Illinois that has developed a new process to turn pig manure into oil.
This sounds like a match made it heaven, no? It isn’t going to solve the world’s addiction to oil, and we should all eat more vegetables and less pork, but if the 43 million hogs in the Midwest have to relieve themselves somewhere, maybe they should be going in our gas tanks?
I’m always skeptical about these kinds of fixes, they make for good press but are often much more complicated than they sound. But nature doesn’t like anything to go to waste and every little bit helps, so I’m looking forward to hearing how Chris and Yuanhui get along.
This blog is dedicated to Frank, the favorite pig of Oil Change International’s most prolific blogger, Andy Rowell.