Earth Beat, 11 February 2011. Is a retrofitted car more environmentally-friendly than a new one? Where does all that steel go anyway? And how about used deep-frying oil as a fuel for your newly-retrofitted vehicle? How to use the wasted or failing resources at your fingertips to create more.

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Car park creek
Many rivers and creeks that run through our cities are diverted off into underground concrete tunnels. Host Marnie Chesterton speaks to Richard Register from Ecocity Builders about a car park which was dug up in Berkeley, California to bring the creek beneath it back to the surface, in what the locals term a ‘daylighting’ project.
 
Eco-pimping
The words ‘fuel’ and ‘efficiency’ aren’t what you’d use to describe a Mercedes-Benz. Classy, yes. Reliable, definitely. But it’s not the car of choice for the eco-minded. Or is it? Journalist Evert Nieuwenhuis (pictured above) had his Mercedes 240D for six years and had driven 64,000 km in it before he decided to give it a greening. Earth Beat producer Marijke Peters met him to find out exactly what this means.
 
Make and mend in Malawi
Marnie looks at a few projects around the world where they’re re-using things – for better or for worse. She’s joined in the studio by producer Louise Stoddard who has recently returned from Malawi in Southern Africa.
 
Freegans
Marnie goes dumpster diving with Guy Crawford, who finds his dinner in the back of bins. Freegans are so unhappy about how much food we waste, they rummage through rubbish to find useable food.
 
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Eco-diesel
Biodiesel has become a popular alternative to traditional fuel. It’s made from plant matter or used vegetable oil. Anna Boiko-Weyrauch brings us the story of Enterprise, Alabama, a small US town which recently opened a biodiesel plant to make fuel for its fleet of public vehicles.
 
Band bus on vegetable oil
Who better than a heavy metal band to put an engine that can run on vegetable oil to the test? All those cross-country tours would challenge anyone’s mileage, but Mose Giganticus have been running their tour bus on found vegetable oil since 2008. Matt Garfield, the band’s lead member joins Marnie to tell her how the bus fares.
 
Scrap it
Where do cars go when they are ready for early retirement? In Vancouver, British Columbia people can take their high-emission vehicles to a program called BC Scrap-It, to trade in their cars for greener alternatives, and to give their old gas guzzlers new, non-polluting lives. Earth Beat correspondent Jennifer Chen went for a visit to the scrapyard to find out more about the program and joins Marnie to talk about it.
 
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