Giving fossil fuels the chop

A chance meeting in a village pub between Clive Butler of the University of Exeter and Andrew Colville, a teacher at Axe Valley Community College, led to an exciting and unique collaboration between the school, the university and local businesses. Colville had a vision of pupils setting up and running a business that sold biodiesel that they produced themselves within the school from waste vegetable oil - taking science out of the classroom and into the real world. In January 2009, Axe Valley Community College and the University of Exeter's school of biosciences were awarded a Royal Society Partnership Grant¹ and the project became a reality. But the hard work had only just started.