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Environmental campaigners staged a demonstration outside the offices of a leading UK biofuel supplier yesterday.

Protesters dismissed the use of biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels and warned of "climate disaster" if their use caused deforestation.

Gathered outside the Edinburgh office of Greenergy, an oil company and biofuel supplier, campaigners waved banners and banged drums as police officers looked on.

Their demonstration is part of a national week of action.

Biofuels are any kind of fuel made from living things, or from the waste they produce, and come from organic materials ranging from sugar beet to wheat.

They have been hailed as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels in transport.

But campaigners argue that the push to use crops for fuel can expose areas of environmental importance, such as rainforests, to the risk of deforestation.

They say that some biofuels produce more carbon than fossil fuels.

Ben Miller, 21, a politics student at Edinburgh University and member of the group People and Planet, handed a letter to a member of Greenergy staff outlining the protesters' objections to growing crops for fuel.

"The biofuel industry is actually leading us down the path towards a climate disaster," he said. "Biofuels are not green and consumers need to realise that this is not a green fix to our transport problem."

He accepted that there was a role for small-scale, locally-produced fuels, made from waste crops.

"We are going to have to make some tough decisions about what we can use our land for with such a burgeoning population."

Greenergy greeted the protesters with cups of tea.

Alex Lewis, head of communications, said that they shared some of the protesters' worries.

"It is a perfectly valid debate and it is important that everybody gets this right," she said.

"We do agree that biofuels need to be sourced from sustainable sources."