One day in the future, you can skip going to the gas station or even plugging in your car. Instead, your sweet ride could be powered by your poop. Yes, your poop.
UCLA graduate student David Wernick and his colleagues are working to produce new kinds of biofuels. “We’re working with anything, such as agricultural waste like manure, municipal waste like sewage, plant matter, cellulosic matter, and even carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,” Wernick said in a video (below) about his research.
I won’t even try to get into the science of all of it (Wernick does that in the video) – but basically, the team is attempting to engineer bacteria to convert the protein contained in manure into energy-rich fuel. And the best part? Well, according to Wernick, “You can drop it right into your car.”
This would really change the world when you think about it. No more wars over oil (wars over Taco Bells instead?), so much money would be saved by people not having to buy fuel, and every gas station would finally have a clean restroom – but only because they would all close and well, no one would want to waste their valuable poop anymore.
