Touring the U.S., green-style

The Big Green Bus barreled across the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge Friday, fueled by discarded vegetable oil and the infectious spirit of 10 Dartmouth College students.

Charleston is the seventh stop on a 45-city tour to promote awareness about alternative energy.

"There are sustainable things you can do in life to reduce your carbon footprint," said Frances Vernon, an 18-year-old Dartmouth sophomore.

Some of their energy-saving tips are simple: Turn the lights off when you leave a room. Other measures are far more creative, such as tricking out a retired school bus to run on discarded vegetable oil.

Any diesel engine can be converted to vegetable oil, said Colleen Wearn, a 22-year-old Dartmouth graduate. The Big Green Bus's advance car, a 2004 Volkswagen Jetta, was vegetable-oil-ready in fewer than 12 hours with a kit.

Any vegetable-based oil will work, including canola and peanut oils, Wearn said. Along the journey, the advance car scouts out fast-food restaurants and Chinese takeouts eager to offload their waste. Restaurants often pay services to take their old oil.

The back of the bus, where the filters are, can smell like popcorn or chicken nuggets sometimes, Vernon said. The bus can carry 220 gallons of oil, which is run through two filters before it is pumped to the engine.

"Sometimes you can see the chunks of onion rings still floating in it," Vernon said.

The Big Green Bus gets about 9 miles to the gallon, and driving with the pedal to the floor will just break 60 mph.

The Big Green Bus traveled to Mount Pleasant from Raleigh, where crew members met with legislators to talk about alternative energy.

Solar panels on the bus roof provide power to run their laptop computers, cell phones and flat-screen TV. "You don't have to give up your creature comforts to be green," Vernon said.

Even the wood floors in the bus are from Eco Timber, a California company that sells sustainable wood flooring.

This is the Big Green Bus' third summer tour. A new crew travels each summer and operates like a small corporation with engineering, logistics and public relations departments.

Not the typical college road trip, the Big Green Bus has a global mission to "change your fuel and change the world."

Reach Jill Coley at 937-5719 or jcoley@postandcourier.com.