Back to the Future, the DeLorean powered by trash will be soon reality

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Two Japanese companies have modified the legendary car, now powered with bioethanol. On the road in Tokyo on October 21st.

The dream of every ecologist nerd will be on the road in Tokyo. It’s the DeLorean, the car made famous by the Back to the Future trilogy has now zero-emissions (or almost). Discarded the idea of using plutonium, not too eco-friendly, the creators of the crazy project decided to be inspired by the second episode of the film, when Doc tries to return Marty McFly from 1955 to 1985: due to the lack of radioactive material, he invented a device – Mr Fusion – able to ensure an electric power of 1.21 gigawatts at zero cost, using waste.

This time garbage is not used to travel through time, but the power it generates will be more than enough to exceed Japanese speed limits. The new eco-DeLorean was developed by Jeplan Inc., a company qualified in recycling, and by NBC Universal Entertainment Japan, specialized in movies. The vehicle is not powered by banana peels and full garbage bags (as in the movie) but by bioethanol produced from cotton fibers and old clothing.

The clothes, collected in stores around Japan, were sent to the Jeplan establishment, in the jurisdiction of Ehime, and then turned into ethanol through a process called saccharification.

The idea comes from Michihiko Iwamoto, who saw the movie when he was a teenager and now, at 51 years of age, he is the CEO of Jeplan, a company that produces technologies in the field of recycling. Iwamoto says: “I’ve had this dream for thirty years, and today it is about to come true.”

The trash-driven DeLorean will be on the streets in Tokyo on October 21st 2015, the exact date on which the protagonists of Back to the Future travel at the end of the first episode. The audience – nerds and ecologists – are looking forward to this moment, to scream to the sky, as Doc did, “Great Scott!”.