Country music star Willie Nelson has an odd Thanksgiving tradition. Instead of gorging himself on turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, he makes biodiesel. Nelson, his business partner Bob King and their families take the grease from their turkey and turn it into environmentally friendly fuel in King’s backyard in Maui. The process takes a matter of hours. Nelson then uses it to fuel his Mercedes and takes a drive around the island.

One such Thanksgiving was depicted in ‘Revolution Green,’ a documentary chronicling the evolution of King’s Pacific Biodiesel Inc., the first biodiesel company in the United States. The movie was screened before an informal discussion on biodiesel featuring Guster’s lead guitarist, Adam Gardner, on Sunday afternoon in Marshall Auditorium at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

The event was part of the fourth annual Campus Consciousness Tour, also playing at the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University. It’s hosted by Reverb, a nonprofit that promotes environmentalism for musicians, which was founded by Gardner and his environmentalist wife Lauren Sullivan. Guster was also on campus to perform at Sunday’s Block Party concert with Ben Folds.

The focus of the discussion and the movie was community-based biodiesel and sustainable biodiesel production. Jeff Plowman, executive director of the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance, introduced the documentary by describing the difference between sustainable biodiesel and other biodiesels. Sustainable biodiesels are made from crops and waste produced in local communities.

‘Right now, people are just plugging big (agriculture) into big oil,’ Plowman said. ‘We have to make biodiesel sustainable or we’re not going to solve anything.’

The documentary began with actor Woody Harrelson asking, ‘What exactly is green?’ It then gave a short history of fuel in the United States, starting just before John D. Rockefeller monopolized the oil market. The movie also told the story of Bob King, who first turned waste like fat, oil and grease into biodiesel. It talked about the fuel’s popularity with the trucker community after Willie Nelson began promoting it.

King’s theory about sustainable biodiesel is ‘cradle to cradle,’ meaning that farmers can grow food that is then refined into biodiesel and used in the vehicles that help produce the crops.

The discussion started with Gardner handing out kitchenware that was manufactured using biodiesel products, such as plates made from sugar cane and cups made from corn.

‘This bag is actually made of an old T-shirt,’ Gardner said to laughs as he held up the bag the products were in. ‘We just sowed up the bottom of it and now it’s a bag.’

Guster uses the kitchenware as part of their attempt to make their tours as green as possible. The band also fills their tour bus with biodiesel fuel and rarely travels by airplane. Their latest record, ‘Satellite,’ was released in recycled paper slips, as opposed to traditional jewel cases. Guster encourages fans to carpool to shows and provide incentives like VIP parking.

The conversation then turned to ESF’s production of biodiesel. ESF uses leftover vegetable oil from SU dining halls to refine biodiesel on campus.

Steve Lloyd, SU’s chief sustainability officer, said ESF is already using biofuel, and that SU is promoting its use as well.

‘SU is trying to get their vehicles, except for ambulances, on biofuel,’ Lloyd said at the documentary screening. ‘We’ve had a little resistance to that from some upper people, but Syracuse is really trying to get that pushed through.’

Having established ESF’s commitment to biodiesel, the discussion focused on how to promote environmentally friendly practices. Jessica Meyer, a freshman environmental engineering major, said ESF’s next step should be reaching out to SU.

‘I’m not an ESF student, I’m an SU student,’ she said. ‘I think a lot of us just really don’t know what’s going on right next door. We’re really closed off.’

After the discussion ended, Meyer said she came to the event because she was interested in sustainability practices, and that she learned a lot about biodiesels.

‘I didn’t realize that it could be done on a local scale,’ Meyer said. ‘I think that if it is done at a local scale, then it can be done in a more sustainable way than importing things even more to the United States for another source of energy.’

rhkheel@syr.edu

Published on April 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm