FOR THE LATEST ALTERNATIVE FUEL, SCHOOL TURNS TO BARNYARDS -- AND YOU KNOW WHAT'S THERE

Back in the 1980s, officials at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville began considering innovations that would benefit the school and put the university on the map, so to speak. One idea was to stop burning natural gas in the campus power plant, which produces steam for heating and cooling the campus.

By the mid-1980s, the university had converted the power plant's fuel to wood chips. It just so happened that a Northwest alumnus owned a walnut lumber operation in nearby Iowa and donated all the waste wood for the project. It worked. The university saved, over the years, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Next the school experimented with pellets from waste paper.

Now the university is demonstrating that there are few, if any, limits to alternative power sources. How do you say this politely? The latest fuel is pig poop, supplemented by waste from chickens and dairy herds.

See what you can do when you put your mind to it?