Whole Life Times: The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

January 2005 | Whole Life Leaders

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

Powered By Veggie Oil

by Eliza Thomas

At this moment in time, the industrialized world is moving into the death throes of a 100-year-old petroleum addiction. While we’ve yet to collapse, glassy-eyed and seizing in a back alley, the party is definitely over, most of our friends have gone home in disgust, and we’ve got that wild look in our eyes — it’s only a matter of time.

But traversing the fringes of the mainstream are those who would fuel our hope of recovery. They come by converted school bus, camper or clunker, trailing an intoxicating eau de french fry. Eco-missionaries in the growing “Conscious Caravanning” movement, they travel the world on recycled veggie oil, spreading the gospel of sustainability.

“There are easily 20 or more groups formally traveling around the country in converted vehicles teaching people about biofuel,” noted Ryan “Veggie Boy” Grace, an expert in vegetable oil conversion technology (check out his Web site at realenergy.net). WLT caught up with Grace and the other 10 members of the Sustainable Solutions Caravan (SSC) at the Calabasas Farmer’s Market when their tour passed through LA in December. This is SSC’s second year road-tripping from San Francisco to Costa Rica on a community by community, educational eco-adventure in a converted school bus that runs on straight vegetable oil (SVO).

The Sustainable Solutions Caravan is the brainchild of Stephen Brookes, farmer, entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “organic junkie and exotic fruit nerd.” Founder of the Punta Mona Center for Sustainable Living and Education, an 85-acre, off-the-grid permaculture farm and retreat center in Costa Rica, Brookes has made his life an example of living in harmony with the natural world. Brookes devised the SS Caravan’s annual tour to serve the dual purposes of carrying him between Punta Mona and the Center’s affiliate offices in San Francisco while allowing him the opportunity to teach and share information on environmentally responsible living along the way.

Despite what you may be thinking, the Sustainable Solutions Caravan is no hippie bus. “It’s obvious that it takes a counterculturist personality to get on a bus and travel to Central America on veggie oil,” acknowledged SSC organizer Zak Zaidman. “However, to be most effective, we have to continually learn how to build bridges with people in the mainstream who [might] really be interested in this stuff unless they get turned off because a big hippie school bus pulls into town.”

To this end, Zaidman has designed this year’s caravan to function as a traveling showroom of sustainability. In addition to a painstakingly hand-constructed veggie oil engine system, the vehicle’s interior living space features renewable and recycled furnishings including donated bamboo flooring, salvaged counters and closets and retractable bunk beds ingeniously constructed from old snow skis. In California, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, the SSC team will meet with representatives of local government and industry professionals to discuss ways of supporting the growth of sustainable farming practices. Their staff of sustainability experts, eco-technologists, farmers, and performance and media artists also plans to demonstrate the diesel to veggie oil conversions process for locals while connecting native campesinos with organic food distributors.

“When we meet with these small farmers, we can tell them for real that we can help them get their products to a viable market...preserving their traditions while raising the standard of living in a way that is sustainable and congruent with their culture,” effused Brookes.

The Sustainable Solutions Caravan anticipates completing their journey to Punta Mona by mid-January, but you’ll have other opportunities to catch them or one of their caravanning brethren on a road near you in the year to come. And with eco-superstars like activist Julia Butterfly Hill, actor Woody Harrelson and Paul Newman’s Organic food label, Newman’s Own, staging their own renewable-energy road trips, it may not be long before being “on the bus” becomes a standard of American mobile culture.

Follow the Sustainable Solutions Caravan as they blog their way to Costa Rica at www.sustainablesolutionscaravan.org.

Eliza Thomas is WLT’s Associate Editor.

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