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CMU Grads Grow Sunflowers For Biodiesel

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Oct 14, 2008 8:44 pm US/Eastern

CMU Grads Grow Sunflowers For Biodiesel

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― Where you once saw vacant lots -- strewn with garbage and broken glass -- you may find something new in the neighborhood -- sunflowers.  Acres of sunflowers growing in Lawrenceville, Hazelwood, East Liberty and Larimer.

Why all the sunflowers? It's the seeds.

"An acre of sunflowers can produce close to 100 gallons of straight vegetable oil per year and so the hope is that these seeds can be crushed into vegetable oil and processed into bio-deisel," says Andrew Butcher, one of the founders a company called G-Tech.

G-Tech was started by some recent Carnegie Mellon grads, who want to turn the problem of abandoned urban properties into part of the solution to the nation's energy crisis -- by crushing the sunflower seeds into sunflower oil and converting that into clean burning bio-fuel.

"Definitely cleaner than gas," says Butcher. "Emissions from bio-deisel are know to have an 80 percent better impact on carbon emissions."

And the flowers are having a positive impact on the neighborhoods.

"Instead of an abandoned house. We have sunflowers and it makes a difference," says Ora Lee Carroll of Larimer.

There are some 14,000 vacant lots in the city of Pittsburgh and G-Tech has taken over 12 acres of them in partnership with the city and community organizations to beautify the eyesores. But the sunflowers are more than just pretty, bright and yellow. They actually can de-toxify the ground and prepare it for future development.

"We want to go block by block lot by lot until the time of the development of houses and businesses," Carroll says.

A clean energy foundation just awarded G-Tech a $90,000 fellowship for expansion to farm new lots -- but perhaps just as important is the fact that it's keeping bright young entrepreneurs here in town.

"Pittsburgh is a space that embraces innovation, embrace entrepreneurship and it's one reason why I've decide to stay here," Butcher says.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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