We just finished designing and building our first bicycle-powered oil seed press on Thursday and “rolled” it out at Earth Stewardship Day at Sandy Spring Friends School, where kids pedaled for oil from the sunflower seeds they grew in our Energy Garden.



The oil will be made into biodiesel for their school buses, the glycerol (the waste product of the biodiesel production process) will be made into organic soap for the kids to sell, and the sunflower meal will be fed to chickens and sheep. We’ve already made biodiesel from waste restaurant grease for a year and a half to power the school’s 15 bus school bus fleet. We also made organic soap from that glycerol and sold $450 worth in one day at a Friends School holiday event.



The students who have been working in the Energy Garden since last summer were wildly excited to finally see the oil they’ve been hearing and thinking about for so long. We didn’t make much, but as we tweak the press and get used to its personality, we’ll start to get a better and better yield. Several kids suggested building more Seed Cycles and having competitions to see who can pedal out the most oil. The great workout you get is a big bonus, and there was talk of Physical Education credits!



This is a wonderful sustainability education program where students learn through hands-on experience how much time, effort and water it takes to grown their own energy. They enjoy an interaction with nature and gardening, engage in an entrepreneurial effort to create valuable products, and end up thinking about issues of food versus fuel, energy conservation and consumerism, the global politics of oil, and other vital sustainability concepts.

More photos of the event are here.