Environment

Green adventures

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The World’s Laura Lynch meets an eco-adventurer who’s combined low-tech and high-tech to turn a scrapyard bus into a green mobile home. Now he’s planning a voyage around the world using sustainable fuels and a low-carbon budget.

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MARCO WERMAN: Now to a much more personal quest for climate change solutions. This weekend an old school bus takes off from London for a trip around the globe. The bus has been reinvented as a model of echo-efficiency. It’s a somewhat eccentric combination of high-tech and low-tech and its owner hopes to prove a point. The World’s Laura Lynch paid him a visit.

LAURA LYNCH: Just days before his adventure is set to begin, and Andy Peg is scrambling to finish outfitting the bus that will be his mobile home as he travels the world over the next 12 months. You might not think of a school bus as an echo-friendly way to travel but Peg found the rusting shell in a scrap yard and began restoring it. One man’s trash quickly became Andy’s treasure.

ANDY PEG: In fact all the carpet throughout is all off cuts that I found outside people’s homes when they’ve changed their carpets and throwing them away. These chairs and table here, that’s made out of an old office furniture desk. And the shelving here, that’s made with broken shopping baskets.

LYNCH: But Peg, a former journalist turned self-styled echo-adventurer, is doing something else here – combining the old with the very new.

PEG: Apart from the rubbish there’s some really cutting edge technology. So this unit over here is the charge controller for the solar panels on the roof. We’ve got six solar panels, that’s 500 watts, which is actually a massive amount and that powers that fridge and everything else I need for my sort of day-to-day life. And I’ve kind of wired up to it like the flux capacitor from Back to The Future.

LYNCH: Peg is doing all he can to avoid using any fossil fuels. He’ll cook with a wood gas stove, shower with solar heated water, and use low-energy light bulbs.

PEG: But this is the kind of piece de resistance at the back here … .

LYNCH: That’s a huge plastic drum in the back of the bus. It holds 1200 liters of used cooking oil and it’s supposed to last about 5000 miles.

[SOUND CLIP OF STARTING ENGINE]

PEG: That doesn’t so good. There we go. Nice little puff of white smoke coming out there. It’s good healthy stuff. It’s all vegetables.

LYNCH: Peg’s plan is to top up the tank throughout his travels wherever and whenever someone wants to contribute their used oil. But incase he runs out he’s got a high-tech backup fuel system – a hydrogen gas generator power by the solar cells on the roof. His goal is to complete his global journey without emitting more than two tons of carbon dioxide. That’s about a fifth of what the average British person emits each year but it’s the target some experts say everyone will have to meet by 2050 to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Peg thinks his bus combining low and high tech will at least serve as inspiration.

PEG: Whenever there’s a green solution it’s very easy to knock it down – say well that will never work to solve all the problems. And I think any one solution will work to solve all the problems. And it’s really a showcase if you like for the fact that there is no one simple answer to our energy problems and our energy needs but actually lots of little solutions. Hopefully if we put them all together they can have a pretty significant impact.

LYNCH: Peg is already getting e-mails from as far away as China supporting his expedition. Though he is not certain he’ll be allowed to enter the country. He does have a Visa for Iran where he believes he’ll be warmly welcomed. For all of his work and enthusiasm though, Peg is a realist.

PEG: I’ve got no idea whether this will work. I’m a little bit skeptical as to whether I will be able to do it but you know I’m willing to give it my best shot and see if there is this kind of infrastructure of waste around the world that facilitates fuel being made from waste.

LYNCH: People walking by sometimes stop and stare at his bus now painted with images of the world. Andy Peg hopes to attract the same kind of attention on his travels to spread the gospel of echo-efficiency and maybe even learn something new from the people he encounters along the way. His expedition starts off from London on Saturday. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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