Clean desk challenge #8 (photo at end of post). I can’t believe the “77% cocoa content Chocolove” hasn’t been devoured long ago. This clean desk thing has got to be boring by now (and we’ve three more weeks to go!) so I think I’ll use it as a push off point for other subjects. And I don’t just mean the fact that the table top needs to be wiped down!

The table has been cleared of papers and files except for the magazine, Fast Company, which has a fascinating article on “diesel-spewing bacteria” by Elizabeth Svoboda. I never thought I’d be a fan of a completely genetically engineered product, but you heard it here first, I could be a big fan of this stuff. As I wrote last summer, I traded in the ole 2001 Toyota Prius hybrid for a 2003 VW Beetle diesel so I could fuel up with bio-diesel.

Since then, I learned how destructive the bio-diesel industry can be if the material isn’t coming from recycled, local sources. (Acres of forest and food-farm land are being converted to mono-crop fields of bio-diesel material in other countries.)

So. Back to diesel in a petri dish. They wouldn’t need to harvest any new materials to make it which is super cool. I’m not clear, however, if they’d be able to modify it to be clean burning. They haven’t made it in any kind of quantity to get into market yet–and who knows if it would pass regulations regarding genetically modified organisms. They also don’t know, at this point, if they’d be able to scale it up to a size that would be cost-effective to produce. Fascinating concept though, and worth keeping an eye on!