Alternative Transportation Week: Biodiesel and BioWillie

With an admiring nod to WorldChanging and their regular feature The Week in Sustainable Mobility by Mike Millikin, we hereby launch our own inaugural Alternative Transportation Week.

Alternative Transportation can- and, in this case, will- be broadly encompassing, from automotive innovation to non-car transportation alternatives. We'll highlight the start-ups that are poised to make some noise in the game of "Reinventing How Humans Travel." It will take us more than a week, too.

Leading off is a company and a namesake entrepreneur that may not have been on the tip of your tongue for pioneering alternative transportation. But Willie Nelson is a Good Business Optimist, for sure. This legendary singing/song-writing country/folk musician and long-time-Highwayman, reformed bandit, one-time Taco Bell pitchman, near Octogenarian, weed-legalization proponent is no stranger to social activism, having stirred up great awareness for the plight of the American farmer with fellow troubadors Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews in the festival form of Farm Aid.

Now his brand graces BioWillie, a Dallas-based brand of premium biodiesel distributed to a current roster of 13 truck stops in 7 states in support of both the environment and his familiar farming friends, who of course produce the earth stuff of which biodiesel is a product.



Willie, maybe we didn't love you quite as often as we could have in your early days as a country crooner (although if you ever get a chance to see the man and his band live, do it, still, and be mesmerized by his enduring persona and the emerging stage presence of his young, prodigious guitar-shredding son.) But, with much more to be said in the nascent dialogue of biodiesel and other alternative fuels, we salute your leadership in the alternative transportation space.

News and What-They're-Saying:
Domestic Fuel News on BioWillie distributor Earth Biofuels' financial struggles
Sarah Rodman on the green-ing travel habits of conscientious musicians and touring acts
Stillisstillmoving.com on the rebel Willie Nelson
GreenTechnolog on a recent PBS segment on BioWillie (with a YouTube clip)
Fairfax Digital, 2005 (photo credit, too!)