World Record

In May 2010, Canadians Cloe Whittaker and Tyson Jerry broke the the Guinness World Record for the longest journey made on alternative fuel set in 2006 by a German team by driving 48,535 km (30,158 miles) across the North American continent, stopping to talk to local schools about sustainability. Their ‘Driven To Sustain’ team drove through every state, province and territory in the U.S. and Canada, all on waste vegetable oil donated by restaurants they passed along the way.

Our drive around the circumference of the continent will take us about that far, but we’ll be doing it on African roads and without liberal scatterings of McDonalds en route  – we think we should get bonus points for that!

Here is the process we go through with the waste vegetable oil that is donated to us:

1. Collect used cooking oil from restaurants en route

2. Borrow a drum and clean it out

3. Prepare the first filter – a layer of cheesecloth…

between two washing baskets

Our baskets have extra holes

4. Pour in waste veg oil

5. Wait for it to filter through the cloth

This may take some time, so take a snack break!

6. Repeat and repeat – much to the amusement of your audience

7. Prime the pump containing the second and third string filters

8. Pump fuel into tanks through fourth Donaldson fuel filter

This can take all day…

9. If there’s more fuel than can fit in the tanks…

winch it up onto the roof…

with the help of some strong youngsters

10. Try not to spill any.
P.S. This is practically impossible!