Veggie Girls Drive for Biodiesel

Sporting green "veg" t-shirts and a positive outlook, they call themselves The Vegetable Energy Group, but they're known simply as the "Veggie Girls" for short. The five shown here, all 18 year-old college students - Caitlyn Arigo, Audrey Faber, Rachel Lucas, Alyssa Tennant, and Aubrey Wynn - are on a mission to educate people about the benefits of alternative fuels and have fun along the way. They're doing so now on a cross-country trip in a biodiesel Ford pickup, having set out from Green Car's hometown of San Luis Obispo, California, on August 4, with their sights set on their end point in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. One of their 18 stops on the journey will be in Colorado to pick up a sixth Veggie Girl, Jenny Morrill.

The group's fuel of choice this trip is waste vegetable oil (WVO), available in reasonable abundance at restaurants nationwide. Rather than depending on commercially processed WVO, the diesel Ford F-350 will run on this fuel straight from the fryer since it's carrying along its own cargo box-mounted refining plant, installed by Diesel Oil Conversions in Santa Maria, California. A 91 gallon fuel tank will allow fewer fueling stops than normal for such an ambitious journey.

The Veggie Girls' travels are documented in real-time on a LiveJournal blog at http://veggiegirls.livejournal.com.