Transportation

The ASUW is looking to make the campus greener by helping the University produce some of its own fuel.

The ASUW Board of Directors (BOD) formed a committee to push biodiesel use on campus last week.

The committee wants to persuade the UW Motor Pool to power its vehicles with fuel made from cooking oil, said Karl Smith, ASUW's director of operations.

The task force was formed after the UW Biodiesel Alliance, a student group, appealed to the board for support last week, Smith said.

A pumping station for those with urge to "drive green" opened behind University Village this week. The station gives UW denizens a chance to fill their diesel-burning engines with biodiesel.

"It's a chance for people to actually step up and take action," said Tom Marier, a spokesperson for Laurelhurst Oil, the company that owns the station.

"Petroleum is a wonderful product, but I don't know how much sense it makes to burn it," said Marier adding to the trio of advantages he sees in using the vegetable oil based fuel.

Biodiesel sounds like a concept straight out of Back to the Future. Yet instead of powering up a time machine, the French Fry Fuel FOols (the first O is intentionally capitalized for no real reason, according to the club) use waste from fast food to power ordinary cars.

Ravi Mikkelsen, president of the club, formed the group after participating in a UW project dealing with different forms of energy. He was motivated by the lack of resources on campus for students wanting to create their own biodiesel.

UW Motor Pool Operations has been recognized as one of seven Washington facilities in fighting pollution. It was awarded the 2004 Governor's Award for Pollution Prevention and Sustainable Practices.

According to manager David Carr, motor pool has many ways of minimizing harmful effects on the environment, the most important of which is not well-known.

"The single most important contribution motor pool makes to pollution prevention and sustainable practices is often overlooked," Carr said.

If you happen to be jogging through the wetlands on any given afternoon, you might see some strange-looking activities occurring in the far northeast corner of campus. In a small, open-sided structure, a dedicated group of students are attempting to revolutionize the way we fill up our gas tanks.

It might sound funny, but it is possible to power a diesel engine with no petroleum products whatsoever. This is the direction that the Urban Sustainability Group (Ursus) would like to see society moving in.

A group of students has started taking the same grease French fries are cooked in to create a cleaner fuel for diesel engines.

Diesel engines are built to last up to one million miles, so the students bringing biodiesel to the UW feel the fuel is the problem, said Wilhelm Welzenbach, a forestry graduate student.

Actor Woody Harrelson will pedal his celebrity from Seattle to Santa Barbara, Calif., on a bicycle journey to promote and increase public awareness of eco-friendly living.

Harrelson will be launching his trip by giving an on-campus lecture tomorrow in the HUB Ballroom. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the show starts at 7.

The "Mothership," a tour bus running on vegetable oil and hemp, will follow Harrelson and his crew on their bicycle trek down the West Coast. It will be parked outside the HUB tomorrow.