The quintessential South African picture: a filling station, the evening before the fuel price is set to climb. Twenty cars queue to extract the last dregs of petrol in the underground tanks; a hundred others drive past, hoping to find a quieter station.

South Africans understand very well how heavily budgets are affected by the global increase in fuel costs. Many are running cars dry in the hope that it will save them a few rand. More than that, South Africans are also becoming more environmentally aware. After Al Gore's controversial documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the world's conscious effort to change how we all interact with our surroundings shot to unprecedented heights.