Having access to quick and efficient service allows you to focus on more important tasks while ensuring that your wardrobe remains fresh and clean. It is our job to clean this up. Ask for references from previous employers or customers so that you can get an idea of how reliable they are as well as how well they do their job. Our smartphones are nothing but machines and a machine needs regular maintenance if your wish to get the most out of it. It may produce 100 gallons of the fuel out of one season’s crop. Relying on produce from halfway around the globe to feed a hungry nation is a risky price to pay for widespread biofuel integration into the world’s energy supplies. Careful fertilizer application can help prevent widespread pollution problems, but expanding biofuel production to meet the world’s demand opens the door for more mistakes in this realm. Biofuel production using food crops such as corn, soybeans and sorghum has the potential to alter drastically the world’s access to affordable food.

Likewise, the fertilizer, water and land required to produce enough biofuel to reduce fossil fuel consumption significantly can create other problems, ranging from increased pollution to decreased access to food. The rise in demand for food-biofuel crops can have a positive effect for crop producers, in the form of higher prices for their produce. But while different crops can become biodiesel through the same process, the resulting fuel can vary greatly in its ability to produce power. Many biofuel crops are used to make biodiesel. With international trends swinging toward sustainable transportation, fuels such as corn-based ethanol and biodiesel from soy, switchgrass and palm oil seem like a good step toward cleaner, greener highways. Consequently, it makes sense to look for an unsaturated oil as a biofuel source. Industry researchers had found an answer in palm oil, a relatively easy-to-produce biofuel source. The regional nature of high-producing plants such as palm oil means that certain parts of the world are agricultural gold mines: Biofuel demand motivates plantations to expand quickly.

According to some estimates, expansion by Indonesian palm oil plantations caused the vast majority of that nation’s deforestation in the late ’80s and ’90s. Think about the oils in your kitchen: While the olive oil in the cupboard is easy to pour, the lard and vegetable shortening have a paste-like consistency. The oil in their seeds is pressed out, filtered and converted to fuel using a chemical process. But large-scale biofuel production — especially using corn, and in arid parts of the world — will have to share finite water resources with drinking and irrigation needs. But in much the same way that oranges will never be a cash crop in Alaska, there will always be some regions that simply can’t support large-scale production of biofuel-rich crops. Unfortunately, that image is also a sign of monoculture, an agricultural problem that could conceivably get much worse due to biofuels. Hybrids have a higher initial cost than their non-hybrid counterparts, and some have argued that gas must be much more expensive than it is now (unbelievable as that may sound) before the driver recoups the extra cost of the hybrid car. The Toyota Prius remains the top selling hybrid car in America.

At low speeds, the electric engine acts alone, meaning the car does not use gas at all. Eventually the overload causes insulin resistance: The liver slows insulin production and the cells don’t uptake the fructose to use as energy. But those fertilizers can have harmful effects on the surrounding environment, and expanded biofuel production could mean a major pollution threat to sources of fresh water. While technology may eventually narrow those ratios, the input-output energy ratio of modern biofuel production is a major drawback to its widespread use. And while the range of oil-producing crops considered viable for biofuel production is wide enough to fit most growing zones, the most productive crops simply won’t grow everywhere. But if not done with an eye toward conserving resources and maintaining the spirit of reducing emissions through plant-based fuels, this ramping up of production can lead to greater environmental problems than the ones it’s meant to solve. True, a plant-based fuel comes from a renewable source, while fossil fuels will eventually run out. While the first is a bit beyond the control of biofuel producers, the second is at the core of a potentially serious drawback of plant-based fuels: The water demands of some biofuel-producing crops could put unsustainable pressure on local water resources if not managed wisely.