Grease
is the word
Wayne
Turner and Ali Ghantous, members of the North Carolina
Green Party, remove the gas tank seal on a truck
that will be converted to use vegetable oil as fuel.
Greens are traveling across the state in such vehicles
to advocate sustainable energy sources.
Staff Photos by John L. White
After
this truck has been converted, its drivers will
be able to use the grease that is left over in restaurants.
The people driving the vehicles say the exhaust
smells like french fries.
Green
party member Roey Rosenblith removes a logo from
a truck that is being converted.
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By SUSAN KINZIE,
Staff Writer
RALEIGH--When
the jazz band stopped, Elena Everett went to the front of
Global Village Organic Coffee, grabbed the mike and offered
to demonstrate how a huge Green Party SUV could run on vegetable
oil. But the rain had just started again.
A couple of people
raised their hands to show they wanted to go outside and
see, but most of the people at tables eating ice cream or
drinking coffee just sat there, or looked away. She waited
a moment, a small person with a small voice, the heels cut
out of her orange suede sneakers, blond curls just peeking
out from under her Green Party cap. She shifted her weight,
looked down. No one had any questions. She sat down again.
It's not easy
to change the world.
But Everett and
a group of Green Party members, most of them college students,
have been on a crazy ride this summer. Part road trip, part
political campaign, part idealistic mission, they've bumped
around the state in a beat-up, hand-painted green car to
show that sustainable energy is possible and that young
people, given a voice, can make the world a better place.
In some ways,
they know, their goal is impossible: To get at least 60,000
signatures on petitions that would put the Green Party on
the ballot. And sometimes -- OK, a lot of the time -- it
feels as if they've had more setbacks than successes. But
they keep driving forward with the campaign. They call it
ballot access via vegetable oil, as though the grease that
made things run smoothly in politics was not money or power
but the stuff left over at the Chinese buffet.
Everett wasn't
interested in politics until a couple of years ago when,
on a whim, she went to a Ralph Nader speech and was converted.
"He just was very straightforward about how the system
is really messed up. We can complain about it all we want,
but it's our country, our responsibility to do something
about it. It's our problem," she said.
"It kind
of got me excited about doing my part in democracy. Most
people my age think politicians are crooks and money and
corporations run the government -- which is true -- but
I think it can change."
Now she's head
of the Campus Greens at N.C. State University, where she's
a senior majoring in political science and film -- two powerful
ways to effect change, she believes -- and chair of the
N.C. Green Party.
At a convention
last fall, the N.C. Green Party members decided to get on
the ballot.
North Carolina
has one of the most restrictive ballot-access laws in the
country; third parties have to get about 58,000 signatures
just to get a candidate's name on the ballot.
"It's basically
impossible," Everett said. She worked to push legislation
that would make it easier, going to her first legislative
committee meeting this spring. She stood up to talk about
voter apathy -- especially among 18- to 24-year-olds --
and asked legislators to give other parties a chance. She
was so nervous that her voice kept cracking, and she had
to sit down before she finished her speech. "But it
worked," she said: The committee unanimously recommended
the bill, and gave her a new faith in the democratic process.
She kept the
floor debate on a live Internet feed and waited, hours and
hours. But legislative leaders never let it come up for
a vote. She was crushed. And furious.
How the
car works
The first FAQ
on Greasel.com , a site that sells kits to convert cars
from diesel to vegetable oil, is, "Dude, is this for
real?"
One afternoon
in May, Everett grabbed a bent coat hanger, padded with
a rag, to yank the hood of the 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit open
and point out the fuel lines. She can explain it all in
her sleep -- diesel and vegetable oil are chemically similar,
and both are combustible with compression or heat. But vegetable
oil is thicker, more viscous. So the kit uses heat from
the engine to make the vegetable oil fluid enough to slip
through the injector. The car starts with diesel, then she
flips a switch. She has told thousands of people how it
works.
"It's not
complicated," she said, pointing out the fuel lines
and injector. She and some friends converted the $600 Rabbit
with a kit that cost about $500 in her front yard in a few
hours, she said. "I'm a political science and film
major, not a mechanic."
The car has about
the same power and fuel efficiency as it did before, she
said. And instead of filling the tank with gas, she just
goes to any greasy restaurant and asks politely if she can
have some used vegetable oil.
"It's a
really good symbol of what our economy could be," Everett
said. They take something people are throwing out -- most
restaurants have to pay to get rid of the stuff -- and use
it to replace limited fossil fuels. "We're a farming
state. If vehicles could run off soybean oil, that would
be a big boost."
She knows most
people wouldn't want to go through the messy, slow process
of pumping and filtering the vegetable oil out of a grease
trap. But it reminded her of how many little ways there
are to change the world. "It's definitely a step up
from putting a brick in your toilet," to conserve water,
she said, "but it's along the same lines."
Journey
of discovery
In late May,
Everett sat on a can of paint in a driveway, her face inches
from the car, to paint in "THIS CAR FUELED BY"
just over the license plate, which said: VEGI OIL. She and
some friends had already painted over the silver Rabbit,
each working on a different section of the car with a slightly
different shade of green . They painted "PEACE"
on the one side mirror that was left, "The politics
of joy and justice" on one side, a sunflower on the
roof and a mural with a cornstalk on the hood. They taped
plastic over the lost gas cap.
The car had some
problems before the trip, but they blamed that on its age,
not the kit. Everett was more nervous about all the planning;
they found people who would put them up when they were in
town -- but packed a tent, just in case.
Then they were
off -- to Wilmington, to music festivals, to the beach,
to Charlotte, showing off the car and asking for signatures.
They started filming the trip, and typed in updates for
their blog (nc-campusgreens.org/weblog/blogger.html. )
On their Web
site (www.ncgreenbus.com/ ) a message floats up in shades
of green: "It's 106 miles to Raleigh, we've got a full
tank of vegetable oil, 10 stacks of petitions, it's dark
and our exhaust smells like french fries."
Roey Rosenblith,
a UNC-Wilmington Green who was one of the instigators of
the project, said, "People loved it, everywhere we
went."
Didn't
see it coming
After a Sierra
Club meeting in Charlotte one night in June, three Greens
were driving back and the girl in the back seat rolled the
windows down because it was so hot. All the fliers they
had stuffed in the car got caught on the wind and whizzed
up into the air; some flew into the driver's face.
"The road
curved, and we didn't," Rosenblith said. He was yelling
at the girl in the back to roll up the window, so he didn't
see the telephone pole coming, either.
The girl in the
back seat hurt her head, and an ambulance whisked her off
to the hospital for tests. She was fine, but the Greens
were in trouble; her medical bills were thousands of dollars,
and Everett's insurance only covered part of that. The girl's
mother worked but couldn't afford health insurance, and
the Greens didn't want the accident to keep her from going
to college in the fall.
And the Rabbit
was dead. "That was our baby," Everett said.
So they started
over, with bigger goals, more expenses and less time.
They started
doing fund-raisers, selling pasta with pesto in front of
bookstores, getting friends to play bluegrass, punk and
indie space rock at clubs and asking for donations at the
door. They salvaged the conversion kit from the Rabbit,
and found a bigger car -- an enormous car -- an '83 Chevy
Suburban they could buy cheaply from a conservation group.
They ran out
of green paint before they got all the way around it, and
they didn't have time to paint the vegetables and everything
else on it, but they put the old VEGI OIL plate on, and
named it the Green Utility Vehicle.
Admiration
At Global Village
on Monday , the rain stopped later in the evening, and almost
everyone inside the coffee shop went out front to see the
GUV, hood up, motor grunting. They peered at the hoses snaking
around and listened to Everett and other Greens explain
how it worked. They asked questions, sipped coffee, smiled.
They loved it.
They signed petitions.
They stuffed money into the jar; a homeless guy even walked
in from Hillsborough Street and dropped in some change.
A girl asked Everett for the address of a biodiesel co-op
and said she was thinking about converting to vegetable
oil. The jazz band sounded great.
"It's heroic
what they're doing," said Ed King, a semiretired teacher
from Chatham County, looking at the GUV. "This is just
a symbol ... of what determined, resilient, resourceful
creative people can do -- all the things that are missing
in politics."
They have a long
way to go. They need more money to pay those hospital bills,
and they only have a few thousand signatures. But they've
talked to thousands of people, showed them that fossil fuels
aren't the only way to get around, built support for the
Green party, made lots of friends.
"Day to
day I can get discouraged," Everett said, her eyes
closing, her shoulders slumping for a second in the coffee
shop. Then her blue eyes popped open. "Overall I don't."
Staff writer
Susan Kinzie can be reached at 829-4760 or skinzie@newsobserver.com.
Campus Greens
gas up with oil
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The
1984 Volkswagen Rabbit pictured above was converted
by a group of conservation-minded students to run on
vegetable oil. PHOTO BY NHIA VANG/UT |
By Nhia
Vang
UT Associate Editor
June 18, 2003
Imagine fueling
up your car the next time you run out of gas with vegetable
oil.
You think it's
impossible? Well, think again.
Campus Greens
at UNC Charlotte along with students from North Carolina
State University and UNC-Wilmington recently made this idea
possible. The students got together to buy a 1984 Volkswagen
Rabbit. With the help of other organizations from NC State,
students purchased a conversion kit and transformed the
engine to run off on vegetable oil.
This project
is to promote development of alternative fuel sources that
will protect the environment from the pollutants that come
from fuel used today. The project is also trying to inform
more people about the Green Party and getting the party
back on the electoral ballet. Students are taking signatures
for that purpose. Their aim is to get 60,000 signatures
in all.
"I think
it's a shame that people don't know that this kind of conservation
is available," said UNCC sophomore, Justin Flores.
The students
of the three universities are taking the car on a tour around
North Carolina continuing to promote their purpose and promote
the Green Party during the summer all the way through July
31.
For the tour
dates, locations, and more information about the Campus
Greens, visit their Web site at www.ncgreenbus.com. Also,
if you missed the vegetable oil run car, there will be a
benefit concert for the "Project Green Bus" on
Sunday, June 15 at Fat City Deli at 9 p.m. where live bands
will be performing.
Higher gas prices
don't bother this Volkswagen
|
Pedestrians
on Water Street stop Sunday to look at 'The Green Machine,'
a 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit converted by North Carolina
college students to run on used vegetable oil.
STAFF PHOTO - Greg Wolf |
By Millard
K. Ives
Staff Writer
millard.ives@starnewsonline.com
Their Volkswagen
Rabbit doesn't run on carrots, but it does feed on vegetable
oil.
Campus Green,
a student environmental and social justice organization
with the Green Party, converted the vehicle from a diesel-powered
car to one that could run on vegetable oil.
The car was on
display in front of the Ice House on Sunday during the Feel
Good Music Festival.
"To most
people it smells like we're cooking french fries,"
said UNCW student Roey Rosenblith, chairman for the school's
Campus Green.
The car is part
of a worldwide movement to promote the use of alternative
fuel sources that can protect the environment from pollutants
produced by gas-powered vehicles, said Elena Everett, chairman
of the Green Party at North Carolina State University.
"This project
is important when you consider vegetable oil-fueled vehicles
reduce harmful emissions by as much as 70 percent,"
Mr. Rosenblith said.
The car was bought
for about $600 and then painted green. With help of several
students organizations, the book From the Fryer to the Fuel
Tank, and a $400 conversion kit, the students modified the
engine.
Mr. Rosenblith
said they are able to get the used vegetable oil from restaurants
that usually have to pay to get rid of the oil.
"People
are usually glad to give us their oil after we tell them
what we need it for," Ms. Everett said.
Mr. Rosenblith
said the use of alternative fuel is important because the
country gets so much of its fuel – 97 percent –
from other countries.
"We're supporting
countries with oppressive dictators by purchasing their
oil and fighting other countries to get their oil,"
Mr. Rosenblith said.
Ms. Everett added
that less reliance on oil from the Iraq and the Middle East
could mean less motivation for conflict in that region.
Millard K. Ives:
343-2075
millard.ives@starnewsonline.com
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