Going Green With An RV on The Live Lightly Tour

Sara and Matt Janssen along with their daughter Bella are traveling across the United States in their environmentally friendly RV, and are making stops along the way to educate people on ways to live greener and tread more lightly on the earth. Their current plans are to tour until September of 2008.

Some of the things their RV has to make it more "earth friendly" are: - bamboo flooring (which is sustainable) - sunflower seed countertops held together with a soy based resin - environmentally friendly paint on the walls - partial solar on the roof (they are going full solar soon) - a hand carnk washing machine - a fuel system that runs on old vegetable oil although they do still need to use some diesel fuel (The diesel is needed to start the engine; then they convert to the vegetable oil; and then back to diesel before shutting the engine down).

They get used vegetable oil from restaurants as they're traveling and they have a GPS system on board to help them find restaurants to get the oil from (the Janssen's say Chinese restaurants are a good source). They focus on the Mom and Pop type restaurants who don't already have a vendor to dispose of their oil and take the oil off their hands for them. Matt says it's a "win win" situation because they get the oil for free to use in their RV and the restaurant doesn't have to pay for its disposal.

I think what they are doing is great. A lot of people are interested in living a greener lifestyle and the Janssen's are showing people how to do it without sacrificing comfort.

To learn more about the Janssen's and their tour, go to their official website, LiveLightlyTour