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Lake Forest Native Helps Build Bus Running On Vegetable Oil

Nick Devonshire and his Dartmouth classmates made a stop in Lake Forest.

When Lake Forest's saw a field of tree stumps as a 9-year-old, little did he realize then that it would shape the course of his life and career path. 

“It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen,” the recent Dartmouth College graduate said of the clear-cut forest he saw as a young boy.

By the time he was in high school, he turned his feelings into action, and he has not been the same since. 

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After an education at and two years at , Devonshire headed to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. As a junior, he had an idea to help the environment in his school community. 

“I wrote a proposal at Phillips Exeter to burn bio-diesel fuel in the tractors and lawn mowers,” said Devonshire, whose idea gained approval. “If I can change the carbon footprint here, I’ll do this the rest of my life.”

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He did not have to wait long to put his theories into practice in a bigger way. He was in Lake Forest over the weekend with 12 Dartmouth schoolmates and the Big Green Bus they created as a college project to spread their message about sustaining the planet. 

As part of a class project, the group persuaded Greyhound to donate a bus with 1.3 million miles. The students converted it into a vehicle that would operate on biodiesel fuel rather than petroleum-based energy.

“The luggage bays (under the bus) have giant batteries to power our electric system,” Devonshire said. All electricity comes from solar panels atop the bus. It is not an ordinary power set up.

“We have two flat screens,” he added. “We charge our phones and everything else.”

The group removed the 55 seats, retooled the engine, painted the bus green and refurbished it into a vehicle with computers and solar power. Since June 16, they have visited both coasts, hit 42 cities starting and ending in Hanover, N.H., and shown audiences how they made a difference and how others can do so as well.

“We met some people in North Carolina at a T-shirt company who have an organic garden (at the business) and farm it together,” Devonshire said. “They have an organic feast every Wednesday.”

Devonshire is even more excited about refueling the bus. He and his friends do not pull into a gas station. Instead, they go to a restaurant that fries food. Used vegetable oil is what makes the vehicle operate most of the time. 

“We look for a restaurant that deep fries french fries and chicken wings,” Devonshire said. “That is perfect for us. They’re happy to give it to us.”

Most of the fuel is not only recycled, but also free. Devonshire and his friends were eyeing a large tank at the before leaving town Saturday for Cleveland. 

The bus is also engineered with a thermostat to switch from normal biodiesel fuel to spent vegetable oil as soon as the engine is warm enough. “Ninety-five percent of the time we run on used oil,” Devonshire said.

Devonshire is also realistic. He understands a fleet of buses like the one he helped create at Dartmouth is not the complete future of transportation. “There isn’t enough room on the planet to grow enough corn,” he said. 

After returning to Hanover on Wednesday, Devonshire starts a job later this month in Washington, D.C., with a consulting firm specializing in sustainability. He is enthused not only about spreading sustainability projects, but also about showing companies it is a profitable thing to do. 

“It’s really cool to show people they can make money doing this,” Devonshire said. He realizes when people can marry profit with sustainability, the country and the world will be in a better place. 

“I would love to be the chief sustainability officer for Google or General Electric,” Devonshire said of his long-term goals. “I want to show people you do this because there is really good money in it. Whichever country in the world develops clean energy will be the one with the strongest economy. I can only hope it’s the United States and not one of our competitors like China.”

For more information, visit http://www.thebiggreenbus.org/.

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