Turning wrapping paper and holiday cards into fuel

If all the United Kingdom's discarded wrapping paper and Christmas cards were collected and fermented, they could make enough biofuel to run a double-decker bus to the moon and back more than 20 times, according to the researchers behind a new study. For the study, researchers fermented different types of paper and cardboard in the laboratory to assess how chemically and economically feasible it is to turn them into ethanol fuel. They found that it is not only possible in laboratory experiments but should be economically viable on a large scale as well. According to some estimates 1.5 billion cards and 83 square kilometers of wrapping paper are thrown away by UK residents during the Holidays. With techniques used by the researchers, this amount of paper could provide 5-12 million liters of biofuel, enough to run a bus for to 18 million kilometers.