The VO War

Bruce’s fingers look awfully tired from typing all of these blogs, so I thought I’d jump in to set the record straight about SVO vs. RVO. Can we please make up our minds??

The deal is: we have been calling the NOLS Bus fuel SVO, or Straight Vegetable Oil, in accordance with popular alternative fuel terminology. Recent conversations with the bus crew, other environmentally minded folk around the nation and within the office have called for the use of RVO, or Recycled Vegetable Oil, in a move to be more accurate. Thus far our fuel has been coming from grease traps in the back of restaurants, not Wesson bottles.

A quick VO glossary:

SVO – Straight Vegetable Oil, any virgin (unused) vegetable oil used as fuel

RVO – Recycled Vegetable Oil, any used vegetable oil salvaged from eateries for fuel. (In the non-NOLS world, you may see this type of oil referenced as WVO, or Waste Vegetable Oil)

You will still run across SVO in past mentions, but from here on out it’s RVO all the way..

Julie Hwang, publications intern