Donnie was interviewed by Renewable Energy Magazine!
New Biofuel on the Block: An Interview with Donnie Wahlberg for the Clean Fuels Alliance of America
Saturday, 20 July 2024
Donnie Wahlberg wears fame easily nearly 40 years after forming the iconic “boy band” New Kids on the Block in his hometown of Dorchester, Massachusetts. Dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and wearing a silver neck chain hung with a small silver padlock, Wahlberg smiled easily and seemed completely at peace during a recent Zoom call.
New Biofuel on the Block: An Interview with Donnie Wahlberg for the Clean Fuels Alliance of Americ
Apologizing for a one-day delay in the conversation, he explained it was due to a bout of laryngitis brought on by the road.
Yes, decades removed from scoring their first number 1 single, “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever),” the New Kids are back on the road for their Magic Summer tour, promoting a new album, “Still Kids,” and touring America with special guests Paula Abdul and DJ Jazzy Jeff.
But it wasn’t this, nor his role on the highly successful CBS television drama “Blue Bloods” that had brought us together.
Lately the highly acclaimed actor and musician has taken on another role, joining forces with Clean Fuels Alliance America in a campaign to raise awareness about Bioheat® fuel, an eco-friendly and sustainable home heating solution derived from plants, including soybeans.
Blended with traditional heating oil, Bioheat Fuel promises to significantly reduce the carbon emissions and at least some of the environmental impacts associated with living in the densely populated Northeast.
As will soon become clear, for Wahlberg the campaign has rekindled ties to his Boston-area roots while at the same time providing him with the satisfaction of knowing that he’s doing his part to protect the future of his two sons and future generations.
REM: I guess the best place for us to begin is with how you became interested in bioheat and alternatives to traditional home heating oil.
Wahlberg: I got interested, really, in the beginning of this relationship with the Clean Fuels Alliance. Before that, I have to admit, it’s not something that I spent a lot of time thinking about.
I mean, of course I’m aware of the discussions that have been going on around climate change. I have an electric vehicle, for instance, a GMC Hummer EV. And I’m aware and have been aware of the ever-evolving conversation about renewable energy.
But it was the alliance that really brought this concept of sustainably heating one’s home with readily available renewable resources to my attention.
REM: This might be a silly question, but given that you’re not one of those celebrities who is always out there talking about this issue, why do you think the association reached out to Donnie Walhberg to essentially be the face of bioheat?
Wahlberg: Honestly, I think the initial reason was because I’m a family-oriented guy from the Northeast. I grew up in a home that relied on home heating oil, and they recognized that the sustainable solution that we’re talking about made sense for people who continued to live the kind of life I did then.
At the same time, I think they recognized that mine was a voice that appealed to the population they wanted to reach.
So everything about [this partnership] made sense to them on paper. It was just a case of now making it make sense to me on paper — and I’m not talking about in terms of a deal or anything like that. I really want to be passionate about what I’m supporting.
REM: So they make the initial approach …
Wahlberg: And I’m immediately like the average person. I mean, I’m already like the average person, but you know … I had no idea that this was possible; that you could heat a home with biofuel … or even drive a tour bus, for the entire length of a tour, on biodiesel. I really had no idea how readily available these resources were.
And the more research I did about the product and its positive attributes and its benefits to the environment, the more I realized that a lot of people don’t know about it, otherwise, they’d already be relying on it.
I mean, we literally walked through the streets of Boston, asking people who lived there whether they knew they had an option to switch from heating oil to bio heating oil and they had no idea it was available to them.
I have siblings who still live in the neighborhood that I grew up in and they still heat their homes with home heating oil, just like we did as kids. And they didn’t know a clear, more sustainable alternative was available.
Think of the magnitude of that. Everyone knows that you can do certain things and make certain choices that are beneficial to the environment, Everyone has heard of electric and hybrid vehicles, people know what solar panels are … but at the same time there are hundreds of thousands of people — maybe millions — who live in this country and use home heating oil and literally have no idea that this is readily available to them.
I mean, all you have to do to have access to it is call your home heating oil provider.
REM: Right.
Wahlberg: Another thing my research into this product did was it reminded me of how family-centric the heating oil business is — and you know, a lot of what I do is family centric. “Blue Bloods” is a family-centric show. The New Kids on the Block is a family thing because there are now generations of fans coming — our original fans now have families of their own, some even have grandkids, and they are coming to the shows together. Wahlburgers is a family business.
So it seems like everything that I am involved in and had success with is family-centric, and so is the home heating oil industry.
Most home heating oil providers are family-owned businesses that have been in business for generations.
The very foundation of BioHeat is family-owned farms and farmers who looked around and saw a certain amount of waste was an inescapable part of their processes, and decided to do something positive with it.
For instance, in our particular case, our farmers grow soybeans. Now, my percentages aren’t accurate, but for the sake of our conversation, let’s say 80% of what they produce becomes food, and the other 20% just becomes biodegradable on the ground.
What these family farms have learned to do is take that 20% and turn it into a fuel that can be blended with diesel fuel or home healing oil and make a cleaner fuel. So family is very much at the core of this effort, and that was another element that really appealed to me and drew me to it.
REM: It’s funny, but as you were speaking, I thought, ‘I've been writing about renewable energy for years, and never once have I had someone talk to me about biofuel as something to use for home heating.’ I mean, I’ve had lots of conversations about geothermal technology and home heating and cooling, but never bioheat.
Wahlberg: Well, there you go. And you’ve been part of this. You’ve known about this stuff for a long time. And it’s interesting that you should bring up a term like geothermal because there are certain terms and phrases and aspects of this [sustainable living] that sound intimidating.
There are terms and phrases that just sound like a lot to the average person who is just trying to pay their bills or manage their way through tough financial times. A lot of people think, if I’m going to transition from the way I heat my home now to some newfangled way, it’s going to cost me a lot of money, it’s going to be complicated, and it’s going to be a little bit beyond my scope.
The reality is, it’s not any of those things. Bio-home heating oil is readily available. There really is no price difference. And there’s really nothing you have to do to change the system you have in your home.
Geothermal? It sounds like something from a science fiction movie, right?
By comparison, ‘bioheat’ is a simple phrase. And it literally takes something as simple as a phone call to the same family-owned business that most people with home heating oil and their families have known for generations, to bring it into your life.
REM: There is something about this that brings the notion of renewable or clean energy down to the community level, as opposed to a massive wind farm somewhere providing energy to 10,000 homes.
Wahlberg: That’s right. These heating oil companies are generational companies and the families that use their services are typically generation customers.
I mean, I have a home in Boston not far from the home I grew up in, and my kids are going to know who the home heating oil provider is in our neighborhood that same way I did as a kid, growing up in my parents’ house.
Like, when I was growing up, everybody in Boston knew the Grimes Oil Company. The name was right there, in big letters on the side of their trucks and their trucks were everywhere. And you feel like you know these companies. There’s a simplicity and familiarity to it.
And this goes back to what we were talking about initially, regarding my involvement. I didn’t want to get into something that was going to require me to speak a whole new language and take me out of who I am. I didn’t want to do something that suddenly disconnected me from the people who follow me.
This product is so straightforward. It’s not complicated. It’s … well … It's really a choice. It’s there. Whether you want it or not is a simple choice to make. And once you make that choice, it’s a simple transition to make, if you think it’s right for you and your family.
In my case, the more research I did into sustainable home heating oil, the more obvious it was to me: this makes total sense. It makes total sense to who I am.
So it’s not a situation where I’m coming in and telling people what they should or shouldn’t do. It’s really a matter of creating more of an awareness of the availability and accessibility of this alternative, and offering an invitation to people to try it or not.
I also like the idea of being able to sit at someone’s kitchen table and say, ‘You can make the world a cleaner place simply by making a phone call … and not have to change anything else in your life.’
The simplicity of that idea is really appealing to me. Because no matter where you stand on climate issues, whether you are passionate about climate change or not … it doesn’t matter. Everybody, I think, wants to do their part to make the world a cleaner place.
This is an invitation for you to take a simple step and make your environment, your neighborhood, your community, your home, a cleaner place. And that’s the first step toward making the entire world a cleaner place.
REM: I share your sentiment completely, but I’m from a neighborhood, in the New York metropolitan area, that was a lot like the one you grew up in in Boston, and folks there were … for lack of a better word, kind of ‘conservative’ when it came to adopting new things.
As beneficial and easy as this all sounds, do you still run up against some skepticism when you’re talking about this back home?
Wahlberg: Well, let me be careful here because I don’t want to start out having what I’m about to say sound dismissive of bioheat.
But the reality is, the phrase ‘too good to be true’ has the negative connotation it does because when something is thought of as too good to be true, it often is too good to be true.
This, meaning bioheat, is just that good. And what I’ve found is people don’t question the potential benefits for switching, what they question is the ease of switching.
For instance, I spoke to one of my brothers about this, and said, ‘Hey man, you have got to switch over to this product?’ And he was like, ‘Well, what about this?’ ‘What about that?’ ‘And what about this?’ It was like he just kept looking for more questions to ask.
And I said, ‘Listen, I’m going to come over to your house. We’re going to call you home heating oil provider. And we’re going to do this together and see how simple it is.’
In fact, my next goal, when this New Kids tour is over in the fall, is to literally go door to door to people’s houses and say, ‘Let’s call your home heating provider and see how easy it is to make the switch.’
I mean, people that I have spoken to are astonished that they don’t have to rip out the big oil drum in their basement and spend $50,000 to install a new one and turn their homes upside down in the process.
You’re just changing the source of the oil. The very same method is employed getting the heating oil into your house and the very same method is employed to utilize the oil in your house. Nothing is different. It’s just that the product you’re bringing into your home is cleaner and healthier and safer and reduces emissions.
REM: Now see, you’ve kind of gotten ahead of me here. I was going to ask you to give me your kitchen table pitch for bioheat.
Wahlberg: Well, I can give you the long and the short. Because of my relationship with bioheat, I now consciously use biodiesel on my tour bus. But here’s the thing: most of the trucks and buses on my tour were already using it because most of the truck stops around the country are already making it readily available even though it's not heavily promoted.
So, it’s kind of funny. I went to my bus driver and said, ‘Hey man, make sure at these truck stops that you’re using biodiesel.’ And he said, ‘We’re all using it. All of the truck stops we’ve gone through so far on the tour have provided it, so we’ve already been doing it.’
And I bring this up to illustrate bioheat, biofuel, bioenergy, is already here and it’s easy to use. So based on that story, my pitch to anyone willing to listen is ‘We don't have to change anything to change the world.’
We just have to realize what’s already there and take advantage of it.
Now, let’s say I’m sitting in somebody’s home in Dorchester, where I grew up. Maybe it’s someone whose home was passed down to them from their parents. In all likelihood, they’re using the same home heating oil provider their parents did and don’t want to change the way their house operates.
What I’d say to them is, ‘You don’t have to change anything to make a dramatic change.’ That’s probably the best way to say it.
And then I would pick up a telephone and say, ‘Let’s call your home heating oil provider right now.’ And then, ‘Watch how simple this is.’
We dial the number. Jeff from so and so home heating oil picks up. ‘Oh hey, Jeff, good to talk to you. Do you have bioheat available by any chance? You do? Great. Can you switch it over to my house? Great. Thanks.’ done.
And of course, if my pitch wasn’t convincing enough, they could always turn to mybioheat.com or to the website of the Cleans Fuels Alliance America for more information.
But that’s the thing, nobody attached to this has ever asked me to speak outside my truth. I have never told anyone, ‘Look, you have to do this with this product’ and I’m never going to. My goal is to create awareness and extend an invitation to consider an alternative.
REM: You’re the farthest thing from being a pitchman, that’s for sure. But do you ever run into resistance to your straight-forward message, simply because of your celebrity?
Wahlberg: Of course. I mean, if I do an interview or write an Instagram post or whatever about this, generally speaking, the comments and response to those things has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive.
But of course, you’re going to occasionally run into someone who says, ‘Oh, another celebrity, telling me what to do.’ And my response to that is, ‘Well, that person is not listening to what I just said,’ because I’m not telling anyone what to do.
And look, I don’t want to come off as that celebrity who would do that kind of thing. I’m just like everyone else. That’s how I’ve approached this and how I will continue to approach it. I’m speaking to people who grew up in towns like I grew up in and grew up in homes like I grew up in. I’m speaking to people who grew up wondering whether their family could afford to pay the heating bill all winter.
I understand that experience. And, honestly, I understand the skepticism.
All I can say to any of the skeptics is, just consider the fact I’m not telling anyone what to do. I’m only creating a little bit of awareness of an opportunity to make the world a little bit cleaner. And I think the extension of that and what comes of that, is a dialogue, a conversation, and a heightened sense of there being other ways to do things. I know I’ve become more aware, in my own life and because of this relationship, to make small changes – and I’m not even involved in the conversation around climate change, per se. I’m not standing in the middle of that debate.
But, people see things the way that they see them. Like I said, my message is directed more toward the people who grew up the way I did, in a house similar to the one I lived in during my formative years, and have families that are dealing with the same concerns we did.
I know that when you’re struggling to get by and feed your family, and keep them warm, it's hard to say, ‘While I’m at it. Let me save the planet.’ I mean, frankly, what most people are thinking about in that situation is, how do I get my kids through school. How do I feed them and keep a warm jacket on their back in the winter.
The beauty of bioheat is you can still focus on all those things, and make a difference to the planet – and whether you think the planet needs to be cleaner or not is almost irrelevant. This decision I’m talking about making almost transcends climate change. At it’s most basic, it’s about common courtesy.
Do you remember the commercials we used to see on television when we were kids, the one’s about cleaning up after yourself and making the world a better place?
REM: Sure. I remember, particularly Iron Eyes Cody, who was famous for what were then called the “Crying Indian” public service announcements for the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign.
Wahlberg: And then you had Smokey the Bear, you know, who used to say 'pick up your trash,’ ‘tend your outdoor grill or campsite,’ ‘Because only you can prevent forest fires.’ So, we’ve always had people out here encouraging us to clean up the planet. And the beauty of those messages was their simplicity. I think when you strip away the big terms and phrases like, as you said, ‘geothermal,’ that’s when people listen.
“So in a sense, what I’m out here doing is saying, ‘forget the scientific jargon; forget all that stuff. This fuel is better and goes into your current oil tank at no extra expense. And guess what, the oil guy already has it at his facility and can bring it over tomorrow.’
REM: We’ve mainly been talking about people who aren’t thinking all the time about climate issues, but I’d be willing to bet that as you go forward with this that even some climate activists will say, ‘Bioheat? Really? I never had it high on my list of priorities.’
Wahlberg: Well, sure. I mean, people are human beings, and generally speaking, we like to procrastinate and put things off. And what happens? We find that the more we put something off, the more difficult things become later.
“This product, because of it being so available, is an easy, proactive step that anyone can take right now and begin to reap the benefits.
I mean, if the trajectory that we’re on is that the planet is going to be facing some serious challenges in the years ahead because of everything that we’re burning and putting in the environment, if each of us cleans up a little bit now, as individuals, it might save us all a lot of expense later on.
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