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Green Driving Tips

By Natasha Grimm

Staying on top of gas efficiency and cutting down on carbon dioxide emissions is a quandary that environmentalists and the auto industry have tried to tackle. Car manufacturers, like BMW and Ford, have been successfully cornering the market for hybrids and electric vehicles for several decades, leading many drivers to assume that gas-fueled vehicles are evil and bad for the environment.

Get Used to It

While driving a hybrid or electric vehicle might seem like the only choice for drivers who care about the environment and want to be fuel efficient, you can purchase a used, gas-fueled vehicle and do your part in saving the planet. Ecomodder.com, an eco-driver site, says it’s not what you drive as much as how you drive that can make or break your fuel efficiency.  And according to Wired.com,  it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make a new Toyota Prius, an environmental cost you avoid by buying a fuel efficient, used vehicle.

Record Fuel Consumption

Understand how much fuel your car uses on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Keep receipts and track the amount of miles you travel between trips to the gas station in a notebook. Get an app for your smartphone or tablet, like this free Android app, TripMaster. It tracks the amount of miles you travel and how much money you spend at the pump.

The Road Less Traveled

If you have the option of choosing lightly traveled roads over busier ones, there’s more flexibility to employ a wider range of fuel saving techniques than if you are surrounded by other vehicles, generally. Sometimes a somewhat longer, lightly traveled route may result in lower overall amount of fuel used than the shorter, busier route.

The Junk in Your Trunk

Cleaning out your car will help you to reduce the amount of weight you are carrying in your car. It can increase mpg and prevent any garbage from accidentally flying out of your car and going onto the highway and city streets, plus you won’t have to apologize to your carpool partners for the messy vehicle when it’s your turn.

Extra weight in your trunk can reduce gas mileage

Check Your Tires

Keeping your tires inflated to the pressure suggested by the car manufacturer is key to maintaining optimal performance for your car. You will save on fuel if your tires are not experiencing high levels of rolling resistance, which comes from low tires. Check your tires’ pressure as the seasons change too. Tires are affected by ambient pressure. Colder temperatures can cause the pressure in your tires to drop.

Properly inflated tires can improve gas mileage

Drive Less

This isn’t possible for all drivers and isn’t possible for all places you want to go to, but consider riding a bike, taking public transportation, carpooling and walking when going to the grocery store, for a cup of coffee or something near you. Aside from reducing CO2 emissions and saving money at the gas pump, you can reduce the mileage, wear and tear and cost of maintenance of your car if you cut down on how often you use it.

Natasha Grimm, a native of Washington D.C., writes about environmental issues.

Martha Stewart’s dish soap got a “B” and one from Whole Foods got an “A.”   Something has got to change.

Dish Soap

The Environmental Working Group, famous for their analysis of pesticides in produce (the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean Fifteen”) has recently taken up a new cause.  They now have a rating system for household products–things like laundry detergent, shower cleaner and, yes, dish soap.

According to their website, the new  guide, “reviews and rates more than 2,000 popular household cleaning products with grades A through F, based on the safety of their ingredients and the information they disclose about their contents.”

Now most of us have some level of concern about toxins we might consume in our foods, but far fewer have thought about the chemical in other products that they use.  But harmful ingredients can also be absorbed though the skin (“what goes on you, goes in you”) or breathed in.   And I won’t get into the issues their manufacture can pose for the environment.  Why go there when there are safer alternatives?

Toxins in the Bathroom?

In this new analysis, the EWG says that my dish soap, which I have used since I was a child, contains formaldehyde (isn’t that the smelly stuff they keep dead animals in?) which may cause cancer, methanol which may cause damage to vision along with a number of other things I can’t begin to pronounce.  And it isn’t even one of the antibacterial soaps that are drawing increased scrutiny!

I hate to think about what’s in the mildew remover!

Over the next couple of months, I plan to try new products  as my cleaning supplies run out.  (This means dish soap will come quickly, dusting supplies, not so much).  Stay tuned and I will try to share what I learn.

Want to read more in the meantime?  Check out the EWG guide.

What’s Under the Sink with Dori’s friend?

A buying club is a group of people who join together to make purchases at wholesale prices, typically of a specific type of food.  Buying clubs may deliver fresh produce, packaged foods or even natural bodycare products like soaps and shampoos.  My favorite is a group of 12 friends and associates that brings in organic fruits and veggies when the CSAs are done for the season and (mostly) fruit when the CSAs are sending veggies in abundance.  Although less well known than CSAs, buying clubs can be a good option for value conscious shoppers.

“Breakdown” for the Buying Club

How Does a Buying Club Work?

The principles behind a buying club are simple.  People with similar objectives pool their buying power to meet minimum wholesale order requirements.  The club members establish basic ground rules and pitch in to provide the labor required.  In return they get the opportunity to buy food more affordably and to participate in a “community” of buyers.

Typically a buying club has a pre-determined schedule, for example monthly or bi-weekly.  An assigned person will email a current pricelist to the other members who have until the “due date” to send in their order. An “accountant” is responsible for collecting and depositing money in the club’s bank account.  The members doing “breakdown” show up when the order arrives (often to a members garage or business) to unload the truck and group items by member. Then everyone picks up their orders.

Member Boxes Lined up for Filling

Buying Club Box in Progress

Dividing Up Nectarines

Are buying clubs just for the frugal?  Not at all.  I was a member back in my corporate days when I found that buying in bulk not only saved money but time as well (it is very efficient to buy peanut butter in 12 jar cases!). And buying clubs may offer some unique specialty items that are not available locally–just try to find organic currants at your local grocer!

While providing real benefits, participating in a buying club requires work as well, including some serious relationship management.  Small disputes arise and must be resolved, and there is a never-ending search for people to perform all of the tasks required to keep the club functioning effectively.

How Do You Get Started?

If you think that joining a buying club may be for you, you may be able to find one by asking around—especially if you have friends interested in natural foods.  Another option is to contact a vendor such as UNFI or Albert’s Organics to see if there are clubs in your area looking for new members.  You can even start your own buying club—especially if you are a person with organizational skills and friends!

I just got an beautiful box of big organic peaches for a great price!  I made my “plum tart” with peaches, froze individual slices for winter and the whole family indulged. The only way to beat that would be a tree in my backyard.  When it comes to green living, it pays to have options!

Buying Club Peaches

Last fall I enjoyed harvesting and juicing wild grapes, and came away inspired to add more fruit to my young collection of berries.  So this spring, two plum, elderberry, mulberry and winterberry holly (for winter centerpieces) plants were shipped bare root from a Michigan nursery to our back yard.

A few years ago we planted some pear trees that are starting to blossom more so I am hopeful for fruit (alas, our small apple trees were taken out by rabbits).  And the arbor day “stick” my daughter brought home years ago escaped the lawn mower and is now about eight feet tall!  I think I’m having fun!

I admit that it will be a few years before we see the (ahem) fruits of our labor, but there are lots of reasons to add a tree or two to your world.  Trying to decide if there is tree-planting in your future?  Consider the following:

Ten Reasons to Plant a Tree

1.  Natural beauty/property value. Joyce Kilmer was right when she wrote “I think that I will never see, a poem as lovely as a tree.”  And if the aesthetics aren’t enough, trees increase property value!

2.  Support wildlife.  Trees provide habitat and food for wildlife.  This spring, I was delighted to spot a tiny nest in the aforementioned arbor-day-stick-turned-tree.

3.  Energy benefits.  The shade from deciduous trees can reduce your cooling costs in the summer—and during winter they drop their leaves to facilitate radiant heating.  Shading an air conditioner can help it operate more efficiently and evergreens can act as windbreaks.  The Sacramento Municipal Utility District even has an online tree/energy benefit calculator.

4.  Oxygen production/carbon sequestration.  Trees breathe out the oxygen that we need, then consume and store carbon dioxide, which reduces global warming.  Some sources say that planting 20 trees a year can even make you carbon neutral.

5.  Lawn reduction.  A well-manicured lawn is beautiful but can be taxing on the environment.  Between energy-gobbling, particulate-belching lawn mowers, inefficient watering and the use of chemical fertilizers/weed control, it is an environmental boon to reduce lawn by converting areas to woodland.

Trees from our “lawn elimination” project

6.  Prevent erosion. A tree’s canopy slows rainfall and the roots hold soil in place.  Wikipedia tells us that “water and wind erosion are now the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for 84% of degraded acreage, making excessive erosion one of the most significant global environmental problems we face today.”

7.   Shade.  Just picture a summer picnic spread, laid out under a shady oak.  Or a tree lined deck with a table holding…  a) margaritas b) chocolate martinis c) sangria d) homemade lemonade.

8.  Decorating.  It doesn’t have to be all about the environment, even on Earth Day!  I use tree flowers in floral arrangements–crab apple blossoms in spring, tree hydrangeas in summer and pine branches in winter.  And I recently learned that a magnolia branch can be “forced” to produce lovely blossoms in late winter.

9. Air purification.  A mature tree can remove up to 240 lbs of particulate and gas pollution in a year and per Ecology Kids can clean air in four different ways!

10.  Food.  Yes, yes, this is a food and wellness blog after all. In the end, nothing tastes as good as home grown (or really fresh local) food.  I love knowing “where my food has been” and that it hasn’t been shipped for thousands of mile to reach my kitchen.

And who knows, in a few years you may see a mulberry jam post for Earth Day.