Poo Bus Aims To Improve Urban Air Quality

This week the first ever bus powered on human food waste was released into the wild in the UK. This is the Bio-Bus, a green vehicle which is literally, truly powered by poo. This bus was created by GENeco, a subsidiary of Wessex Water, a company proud to product a bus that's able to travel 300km (or 186mi) on a full tank of gas produced by Bristol sewage treatment works. So you don't actually poo ON the bus, but you are on the bus running because of your poo, if you live in the area it's running.

This bus produces far fewer emissions than traditional diesel engines being run otherwise in many bus-laden areas around the world. This reduction in emissions aims to improve urban air quality throughout the otherwise slightly more smoggy environments through which the busses run.

If you'd like to ride this bus, you'll find that transportation between the Bristol Airport and the historic city of Bath will likely accommodate you. This bus is operating currently with the Bath Bus Company.

According to Wessex Water, one passenger's yearly food and sewage waste can fuel the Bio-Bus for 55km. That's nearly a full trip between the Bristol Airport and Bath.

Poo is turned into gas in Bristol thanks to a process called anaerobic digestion.

With anaerobic digestion, 17 million cubic meters of biomethane are generated a year at this one Bristol plant. According to Wessex Water, this is enough power to feed the needs of 8,300 homes per year.

Yes, those ARE people pooing on the side of the bus.

"GENeco's Bio-Bus is an excellent demonstration of biomethane's unique benefits; decarbonising areas other renewables can't reach" said Charlotte Morton, chief executive of the Anaerobic Digestion & Bioresources Association (ADBA).

Morton continued, "The bus also clearly shows that human poo and our waste food are valuable resources. Food which is unsuitable for human consumption should be separately collected and recycled through anaerobic digestion into green gas and biofertilisers, not wasted in landfill sites or incinerators."

*NOTE: This bus was manufactured by Scania. Backers of this project include Roadgas, CNG Services Ltd, Dampney's Agri Environmental, Trant, Grontmij and AIR Decker.*ALSO: This is not the first biomethane powered vehicle on earth. Take for example the GENeco biomethane powered car made back in 2010. That vehicle went by the name Bio-Bug, leading the way for this poo bus in 2014.