Transcript
TEAVA IRO: Mainly to supply the local market and you know we import roughly 80 percent of what we eat, so just not conducive for sustainability for a small country to import that much. Yet we have a very good climate to grow all year round, but it is not happening.
DON WISEMAN: What sort of things are you growing?
TI: We grow a lot of vegetables, root crops, and with tourism being the main industry, certainly a lot of herbs and all of those commodities that tourists like to have on the table.
DW: You are re-using canola oil to drive your vehicles. You are doing this as a gesture of sustainability.
TI: Yeah it is early days yet. I just learned a little bit of how it's done and am experimenting with it. It is not 100%, we are mixing it with fuel, diesel 50-50. Yeah it seems to work all right but I think there are other things we need to know to understand how it's done. Certainly we go through a lot of filters, so while we are trying to reduce the costs, the cost of filters goes up. So if we were able to process it in a much better way, probably we would use that [method].
DW: You are getting the oil from restaurants and so on.
TI: Restaurants and fish and chips shops - wherever we can get it.
DW: And what sort of processing do you put that through?
TI: For me, I just refilter them as much as I can, put them in a different container, it looks clean but allow it to settle for a time then take what we think is refined enough and mix that with diesel oil.
DW: So at Titikaveka you are yet to start using it in your vehicles - you are still experimenting.
TI: We are still experimenting. We are still experimenting with our tractors - that is basically where we are using it, yeah.
