Banana ethanol plan
DISCARDED Far Northern bananas should become the basis for a lucrative biofuels industry, a leading environmental scientist says.
Tor Hundloe is a professor emeritus at the University of Queensland and a researcher for both Griffith and Bond universities on the Gold Coast.
For the past year he has visited farms from Tasmania to the Far North, looking at ways of improving efficiency in agriculture.
Prof Hundloe said good bananas and other products were being thrown away as they did not meet standards demanded by supermarkets.
He said as many as 20 to 30 per cent of bananas did not meet the standards of supermarkets and were discarded.
"Here was a crop where we use fertilisers, fuel for trucks, we transport the damn things and then there's labour to pick them," Prof Hundloe said.
"Then if you are going to throw away 20 to 30 per cent, that is a waste.
"The alternative is ethanol. We are not going to solve the world's greenhouse problems by using bananas for ethanol, but where they are concentrated, like in north Queensland, you can have a small local industry."
Prof Hundloe said one idea was to get together a group of banana growers who would establish a small bio-ethanol plant.
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