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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.

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

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