Oberlin Grad and alt-fuels champion Sam Merrett
Full Circle Fuels

Meet a 23-year-old sustainability superstar who just so happens to live in your backyard. You're sure to see more of him (and his slightly-tilted, left-of-center baseball cap) in the very near future. The man behind Full Circle Fuels in Oberlin is changing the way people think about fuel and so-called "waste" products.

A native of Albany, New York, Stephen "Sam" Merrett (right, next to Full Circle pal Gideon Crevoshay) graduated in 2005 with honors from Oberlin College with a BA in Environmental Studies. He spent most of his time in college learning about biofuels, inspired by a field trip to Great Lakes Brewing Company during his sophomore year. That inspiration has led him to a Howard R. Swearer Student Humanitarian Award, a number of speaking and exhibition engagements and to receive some fairly aggressive alt-fuel infrastructure funding -- to “move the needle” so to speak -- on biofuels retail sale and use.

Intrigued by the idea of creating fuel from waste, Merrett spent the winter of 2003, along with two other students, building a biodiesel processor at Hampshire College with a small research grant. Returning to Oberlin that spring, Merrett was eager to replicate what he had experienced at Hampshire. He founded Biodiesel Oberlin, comprised of Oberlin College students, staff and members of the Oberlin community—all of whom were dedicated to raising availability and awareness of biofuels in Lorain County.

“Biodiesel Oberlin was never anything on paper—it was more a concept of service learning,” Merrett recalled. But it was high-concept, indeed. It led to huge kudos from Oberlin College's President Nancy S. Dye, who praised Merrett's "commitment to community service and its linkage to academic work are exemplary, serious, and sustained" in a recent interview.

“It really was an excellent way to take everything that I learned, move it out of the classroom and make a positive community impact,” Merrett said.

Merrett went on to receive an American Public Power Association Scholarship to research the use of biodiesel in generators at Oberlin Municipal Light and Power Service. He worked with a team of students and professors to apply for funding from the EPA’s “People, Prosperity and the Planet Sustainability Challenge.”

Then, in the summer of 2004, he expanded his biofuel experience by converting his 1998 VW Jetta to Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO). “It started as a weekend project,” Merrett said. “It took a long time to complete the conversion, several weekends in fact. I didn’t have the automotive background I have now back then. It was quite a challenge.”

He’s never looked back. Full Circle Fuels is a new multifaceted alternative fuels center in Oberlin, one born from Biodiesel Oberlin’s success. The station, located at 141 South Main Street in Oberlin, dedicated to increasing awareness and use of biofuels in Northeast Ohio. The youthful start-up company recently displayed their wares and talents at Earth Day Coalition’s EarthFest 2006 at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and offers the following:

•An automotive shop, where diesel vehicles are affordably converted to run on SVO;
•Retail sale of energy efficiency and fuel economy items;
•Collection of waste vegetable oil from local establishments for use in converted vehicles and biodiesel production;
•Alternative fuels at the pump, both ethanol (E85) and biodiesel, for retail sale to customers;
•Biodiesel fuel production in a mobile, “off-the-grid,” community-scale processor;
•Educational initiatives aimed at increasing local interest in and knowledge about biodiesel through educational outreach programs.

Merrett joins biodiesel “thought leaders” like Andrew Watterson (City of Cleveland Sustainability programs manager), Biodiesel Cleveland's Ray Holan (also a columnist at http://www.autobloggreen.com), Tom Szilagyi, Sr. (of E85/biodiesel retailer Sunrise Co-Op in Norwalk), Bob Thompson & Co. (of E85 retailer Town & Country Co-Op) and Phil Lane (of Midwest Biofuels) at the cutting edge of helping alternative fuels hit the road in Northeast Ohio.

Merrett's Full Circle Fuels is a keystone to a "very limited infrastructure" of alternative fuels -- not just in Lorain County and Northeast Ohio, but across the state altogether. Right now, the station is one of a very scarce few selling E85 -- the station is selling the corn-based ethanol fuel at less than a break even point pricewise, in an effort to get the ball rolling.

"We just opened up the 14th E85 pump in Ohio in September," Merrett said. "This pump was sponsored by Clean Fuels Ohio, the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, and the Ohio Corn Marketing Program."

"We are currently working on installing a biodiesel blending pump, with the help of Clean Fuels Ohio, the Ohio Soybean Council, and the Civic Innovation Lab," he added, clearly excited. "This pump will blend dino [petroleum] diesel with biodiesel in any percentage desirable. So, it will be a blend of B2/B20/B100... basically, B-anything pump. We're hoping this will be done by the end of February."

As for SVO, Full Circle has found a bevy of restaurant owners who are "enthusiastic" to contribute to the alternative energy boom, instead of paying people to dump the used veggie oil expended in their food service production.

"We still offer SVO conversions, and now I am working with Dan Conway of Great Lakes Brewing Company and Ray Holan on Burning River Fuels - a separate company which will be selling veggie oil as fuel: http://www.burningriverfuels.com. The idea is to make SVO more accessible to the general public and especially [for] larger fleets who can not realistically collect their own oil."

Along with Full Circle Fuels partner Bob Beckett, one of Merrett's next tricks is to get Oberlin's school bus fleet to clean up their emissions; the district's 14 buses might even eventually get switched over to biodiesel fuel in the near future. The thought is that conversions might even take place on-site, at the Full Circle Fuels station.

“It’s a lot of ground to cover, but we owe everything to our funders. Full Circle Fuels will stand as the future for fueling,” Merrett said.

“It serves as a for-profit model rooted in the recycling of things in our world with plenty of life left... reclaiming the abandoned [gas] stations like the old Marathon station we’re in now suggests that there’s a lot of life and future left in everything around us. At the end of the day, that’s really what Full Circle Fuels is all about.”

You can visit Full Circle Fuels on the web at http://www.fullcirclefuels.com.

From Cool Cleveland Managing Editor Peter Chakerian peterATcoolcleveland.com

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