On today’s college campuses, environmental awareness goes way beyond recycling drives or Earth Day rallies.

At places like Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, students are making their own Earth-friendly biodiesel fuel by converting used cooking oil from the dining hall, said a Jan. 22 article by The Associated Press .

“It ends up as a product that is more friendly to the environment. And we’re teaching with it,” Woody Woodruff, director of facilities at Sinclair, told the AP.

The college is one of many making biodiesel, an alternative fuel produced from renewable oilseed crops, such as canola or soybean, or from used vegetable oil and other fats, the AP said.

Others include the State University of New York, which uses biodiesel for about 8 percent of the fuel used on campus, and Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., which produces 50 to 150 gallons of biodiesel each week to power campus lawn mowers, a garbage truck and farm equipment, the AP said. In Kansas, the University of Kansas uses biodiesel for lawn mowers, backhoes, front-end loaders and other construction equipment.

The AP interviewed Neil Steiner, a 22-year-old architectural engineering student from Oklahoma. “I’m really into green buildings, and it was the greenest thing I could get my hands on,” he said.

Most colleges make biodiesel by chemically converting used cooking oil from campus dining halls, the report said.

Estimated U.S. sales of biodiesel have jumped from 75 million gallons in 2005 to 700 million gallons last year, according to the AP. The cost of making biodiesel $1 a gallon, the report said.

Tags: alternative fuel, architectural engineering, biodiesel fuel, Earth Day rallies, State University of New York

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