Green Options

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If you have visited Planet Save for any length of time you will no doubt have seen me talk about the increasing amount of ‘dead zones’ cropping up across our planets watery surface. In particular, the Gulf of Mexico is home to what is believed to be the largest dead zone in the world: an area larger than Rhode Island that is almost totally devoid of oxygen in the water.

This particular dead zone has formed, in part, thanks to farm runoff that has made its way down the Mississippi River, all the way from Iowa and Wisconsin. Chemicals used on the farms are washed in to local waterways, which all eventually end in the Mississippi which thus makes its way down and out past New Orleans in to the Gulf of Mexico.

Newton, Mississippi, today becomes home to the state’s first retail E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) fuel station. But wait, there’s more. Ford’s Fuel, which has set a grand opening for today, is also an ice cream museum.

Whaaaaat?

That’s right, Mississippi’s first flex-fuel filling station is built on the site of Newton’s old Ford’s Ice Cream factory, which was established in 1928. The new facility — a green one at that — will feature not only E85 fuel pumps, but an ice-cream parlor and a museum dedicated to the town’s long-time local ice-cream history.