Kudzu grows wild. (Photo courtesy USDA)
If you’ve ever lived in the south, or even just gone for a visit, you
know kudzu. It’s an invasive weed that grows like crazy in the southern states. Rebecca Williams reports on a new use for the weed:
Transcript
If you’ve ever lived in the south, or even just gone for a visit, you
know kudzu. It’s an invasive weed that grows like crazy in the southern states. Rebecca Williams reports on a new use for the weed:
Kudzu grows about a foot a day.
“And it covers trees, fences, houses – it’ll cover you if you stand still too long.”
That’s Doug Mizell. He says he can run everything from cars to lawnmowers on his kudzunol. It’s a fuel-grade ethanol made from kudzu. He says he got sick of fighting kudzu and decided to figure out how to use it.
“And I thought well, I’m just gonna sit down and make myself a tabletop still and see if I can’t extract some sugars from this stuff and see if I can make some moonshine. And sure enough I was able to do that and the idea of kudzunol kinda grew from that.”
He says kudzunol smells like gin. Right now he’s working on getting patents – and money – to build a commercial plant to make it. He says with those things in place… he’s hoping to sell kudzunol as soon as six months from now.
For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.