A good ride, eh?

If your daily commute starts with a double double, and if the only rims you’re worried about are the kind that roll up, then you’ll be happy to know that the a pair of microbiologists at the University of Manitoba have been trying to fuel your car with Tim Horton’s coffee cups.

Unfortunately, technology still hasn’t progressed to the point that your morning coffee can also be used to fuel your morning commute, but Tim’s disposal coffee cups themselves can be broken down into a shredded mass that resembles cotton candy. With the cups in a form that provides ample surface area for ethanol-producing bacteria to consume, the researchers were about to provides about 1.3 litres of ethanol from 100 Tim Hortons cups. (Assuming you’re just drinking regulars, at $1.39, you’d have to put up $139 for your 1.3 litres, leaving you with the non-too-appealing price of $106.92 per litre.)

Given the fact that edible crops have fallen out of favour as a source of biofuel because we’d rather fuel our stomachs than our cars, it makes sense to begin looking in our trash for alternative sources. Certainly, we’ve already looked to cellulosic materials and other kinds of (smellier) waste. More than proving that one of our national pastimes is also an energy source, these repurposed coffee cups show that there are innovative approaches to energy that are often sitting right under our noses.

But, hey, why not keep it Canadian while we’re at it, eh?

Via Tree Hugger