Revealed: The staggering volume of cooking oil poured into car tanks every day

Policymakers urged to stop practice in order to help avert ‘growing global food catastrophe’, Andy Gregory reports

A combine harvests rye at a field near Mahlow (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Despite its soaring cost and harmful climate impact, people in the UK and Europe are continuing to power their vehicles with cooking oil to the tune of millions of bottles every day, new analysis finds.

As food price inflation pushes millions around the world into poverty, cooking oils are calculated to have become two-and-a-half times more expensive than in 2020, with Russia’s war on Ukraine choking global supplies.

Yet in spite of this, some 18 per cent of the world’s vegetable oil – nearly all of which is fit for human consumption – is used for biodiesel, according to a new report by the campaign group Transport & Environment.