IF BRITAIN has a national dish, it must be fish and chips. For decades, the meal, still sizzling as it leaves thousands of chippers every night, has added inches to the national waistline and clogged up arteries.
Recent figures show that 276 million fish-and-chip meals are sold each year from more than 10,500 shops across Britain – a figure that dwarfs the number of meals sold at Chinese, Indian and other takeaways.
And it leaves behind thousands of tonnes of waste oil that often ends up being poured down sinks, causing blockages in drains. Even when correctly gathered for recycling, it proves a headache.
Now British motorists are to start driving on it, following the brainchild of a young engineer, Helen Bailey, who works with Aggregate Industries, a firm that supplies quarrying and building materials to road and construction companies.
This week Aggregate and Bedfordshire Highways began a pilot scheme by laying 145 tonnes of asphalt on a residential street in Clifton – with 40 tonnes coming from the waste product of frying pans.
The product, named Vegetex, is so novel that it has won Bailey a place on the shortlist for this year’s prestigious Institution of Engineering and Technology Innovation Award. Patents are pending, and the construction industry is taking note.
She has already picked up a major environmental award from the Worshipful Company of Engineers for “lateral thinking” in coming up with an idea that uses up waste material and guarantees performance, the judges said.
The new road tar, which could significantly cut down on the carbon dioxide emissions created by Britain’s road construction and repair companies, will stand up to all weathers, Bailey promised yesterday.
“The asphalt industry produces approximately 25 million tonnes of asphalt every year, requiring about 1.25 million tonnes of bitumen to bind it together,” she said.
Vegetex, if used nationally, will significantly cut down on bitumen imports. The waste oil is available locally, is cheap to transport and does not even have to be heated before being added to the bitumen and asphalt.
And, Bailey said, it doesn’t smell of leftover fish and chips.