A bus running on vegetable oil was parked near By George Café last week as part of the national BioTour, and a bluegrass band performed on top of the bus by plugging their amps into its solar panels.

The UW chapter of the Washington Student Public Interest Research Group (WashPIRG) booked the bus for a tour stop and invited the student band Old Technology to play a concert on top of it. Though WashPIRG members were a majority of the audience, the curiosity turned more than a few heads and attracted Tukwila School District students who were touring the campus.

The BioTour began in August 2006, when Ethan Burke and Alan Palm drove a 1989 Bluebird school bus converted to run on vegetable oil from Massachusetts to Nevada for the Burning Man Festival.

“We realized it wasn’t converted well, and it broke down a lot,” Burke said. “But that was good because we got to meet and interact with a wide range of people. We learned that one issue that unites Americans is sustainability.”

From there, what had begun as “an adventure on savings and credit” transformed into a full-fledged mobile nonprofit organization that has visited 42 states and countless middle schools, high schools and colleges in the year it’s been on the road. They hope to make it to all of the contiguous United States by the end of the year and “expand the fleet” by adding more buses by the end of the summer.

Sterling Luke, a UW Facility Services employee, stopped to talk to WashPIRG and BioTour members. He’s been using biofuels in his work equipment as a part of a pilot program for more than two years.

Though some connect biofuels to rising food prices and food-related violence around the globe, Burke said he understands and addresses the importance of weighing all of the positive and negative consequences.

“We use a waste product (vegetable oil), so for us, there’s no competition between food and fuel,” Burke said. “The thinking needs to change. We’re trying to insert a new fuel source into an old model, and it doesn’t make sense.”

After its stop at the UW, the bus will spend a few days on the Washington coast and then travel to Chicago. Along the way, the group hopes to spread its message of strengthening sustainability through democracy.

“No matter where we go, there’s a plane of agreement that renewable resources need to be introduced into our energy paradigm,” said Jenny Sherman, who joined up with the bus about eight months ago. “We cross the country advocating for people to get involved and get what they want — and we’re having fun while we’re doing it.”