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Manchester Real Food Guide
Corporates Campaign

Biofuels Summer of Action

When? Summer 2008
Where? Various locations, including Altrincham Festival, Beech Road Festival and "Summer in the Park" at Platt Fields.
Why? To raise awareness of the problems caused by large-scale biofuel production and persuade MEPs to vote against EU biofuel targets...

We ran a series of the stalls during the summer of 2008 on the subject of biofuels. It has become clear that large-scale biofuel production leads to rainforest destruction, pushes up food prices by displacing food crops, and can in some cases lead to more greenhouse gas emissions than burning fossil fuels.

Orang-utan at Altrincham Festival

We roped in a friendly orang-utan to help us collect postcards from festival-goers in Altrincham, Chorlton and at Platt Fields, and got a really positive response, collecting over 1,000 postcards in the space of two weekends.

The next stage of the campaign will be to visit our local MEPs to present these cards to them, along with hundreds of others collected by our fellow groups in the North West, in an effort to persuade them to vote against biofuels targets in the Autumn.

More information

Find out more about the impact of biofuel production in Friends of the Earth Europe's briefing "Agrofuels: Fuelling or Fooling Europe?" (PDF, 174 KB).

Photos

Biofuels action at Altrincham Festival

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Biofuels action at Altrincham Festival

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Biofuels action at Beech Road Festival

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Take Action!

Ask your MP to vote against biofuels targets in the EU Biofuels Directive this autumn, and instead vote for tougher standards for emissions from new vehicles...