Drive efficiently
Watching how you drive can improve your car's mileage per gallon, cutting global warming pollution and saving you anywhere from $200 to $500 each year.
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Travel light and pack smart. Extra weight decreases fuel economy. Hauling an extra 100 pounds in your vehicle reduces fuel economy by up to 2 percent. Place luggage inside rather than on the roof or trunk to minimize drag and increase mileage.
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Drive less aggressively. Aggressive driving—rapid acceleration and braking—can lower gas mileage by as much as 33 percent on the highway and 5 percent in town. Aggressive drivers are using an extra 125 gallons of gas and spending over $250 more than average drivers each year.
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Slow down. In highway travel, exceeding the speed limit by a mere 5 mph results in an average fuel economy loss of 6 percent.
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Know when to use the air. Air conditioning can decrease your fuel efficiency by as much as 12 percent in stop-and-go traffic, so consider cracking the windows. But at high speeds, driving with the windows open can decrease the overall efficiency of the vehicle.
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Don't idle. If you are stopping for more than ten seconds—except in traffic—turn off your engine. Idling for more than ten seconds uses more gas and creates more global warming pollution than simply restarting your engine.
Maintain your car
Keep your vehicle operating in peak performance by following these recommendations.
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Keep your engine tuned properly. Checking spark plugs, oxygen sensors, air filters, hoses and belts are a few examples of maintenance that can save a vehicle owner up to 165 gallons of gas per year, resulting in potential savings of $380.
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Check the tires. Have your wheels aligned and keep your tires properly inflated. Low tire pressure wastes over two million gallons of gasoline in the United States—every day. For every pound of pressure below recommended levels, fuel economy drops 1 percent. Keeping your tires properly inflated means saving about a tank of gas a year.
Drive less
No matter how smart you drive, leaving the car parked always saves more gas and pollution.
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Combine trips. Consider running all your errands in the same area at once, rather than making separate trips. Cutting a 20 mile trip out of your schedule each week can reduce your global warming pollution by more than 1,200 pounds a year and save you over $100 in gas expenses.
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Telecommute once a week. Americans traveled 614.5 billion miles to and from work in 2001. If all commuters worked from home just one day a week, we could save 5.85 billion gallons of oil and cut over 65 million metric tons (roughly 143 billion pounds) of carbon dioxide each year.
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Carpool and use public transportation when possible. An average 2005 passenger car costs about 31 cents per mile in fuel, maintainance and depreciation to drive. If you share rides and use other means to get to work, you'll save yourself money, reduce congestion on the roads and cut your global warming pollution.
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Sources
AAA. 2005. Your Driving Costs 2005. Heathrow, FL: American Automobile Association. www.aaawa.com/news_safety/pdf/Driving_Costs_2005.pdf (16 Feb. 2006). Assumes costs of gasoline at $1.939 per gallon, and fuel economy at 23 mpg.
FuelEconomy.gov's Gas Mileage Tips: www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/drive.shtml
Federal Trade Commission: Good, Better, Best -- How to Improve Gas Mileage [PDF], September 2005.
Hu P. and T. Reuscher. December 2004. Summary of Travel Trends - 2001 National Household Travel Survey [PDF]. Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
How to Have a Car without Owning It
Why do people buy cars? I don't think anyone buys them just for the sake of owning a one-ton mass of iron, aluminum and plastic. We buy them for other reasons, such as to go out with our family or go shopping, don't we?
We buy cars because we want to have the freedom to travel conveniently whenever we like. In other words, we want the service provided by the car, not the product itself. It's important to understand the difference between the service of a product versus the product itself.
Another example is a TV. We don't want a TV just to have a big, black box sitting in our living room! We buy a TV because we want to enjoy TV programs and to find out about topics we can talk about with our friends. If you didn't have a TV, would you be happy just having a clear screen on the wall? Wouldn't it be nice that even if we didn't watch TV programs, we could still have a good time with our friends?
Let's go back to talking about cars. Most people buy and use a car as a means of transportation from here to there. Wouldn't it be great if there were other ways to travel easily without owning a car?
In recent years, the concept of "car sharing" has become popular in Europe and the United States. Car sharing is a system where a group of people shares the use of a few cars, rather than each person owning one. Think about it--although most of the families in Japan today have at least one car of their own, a lot of them don't actually use it everyday.
Some cars spend most of their time sitting in garages. On average, we drive our own cars as little as one hour a day. That's a waste of money, isn't it? To save costs, some people came up with the idea of "car sharing." Instead of owning our own car, which costs money everyday, we can share cars and only pay money when we use them. This is the car sharing system.
In Switzerland, a leader in car sharing, almost 40,000 people have joined a car share system, and borrow and return cars at 800 places across the country. In this system, people who drive less than 10,000 kilometers a year can reduce their driving costs. This is because they only have to pay for the basic fees and charges based on the actual travel distance. Meanwhile, when people own their own cars, they need to pay taxes, car inspection fees, parking fees, repair costs and so on. Since this system reduces household expenses, more and more people are starting to do car sharing.
Recently in Japan, efforts to promote car sharing have been seen throughout the country. After all, the main point is not having a car but being able to use a car when we want to, isn't it?
Car sharing is the beginning of a new idea in transportation in which we can use a service we need, without buying a product--a car.
From kidsforfuture.net
We buy cars because we want to have the freedom to travel conveniently whenever we like. In other words, we want the service provided by the car, not the product itself. It's important to understand the difference between the service of a product versus the product itself.
Another example is a TV. We don't want a TV just to have a big, black box sitting in our living room! We buy a TV because we want to enjoy TV programs and to find out about topics we can talk about with our friends. If you didn't have a TV, would you be happy just having a clear screen on the wall? Wouldn't it be nice that even if we didn't watch TV programs, we could still have a good time with our friends?
Let's go back to talking about cars. Most people buy and use a car as a means of transportation from here to there. Wouldn't it be great if there were other ways to travel easily without owning a car?
In recent years, the concept of "car sharing" has become popular in Europe and the United States. Car sharing is a system where a group of people shares the use of a few cars, rather than each person owning one. Think about it--although most of the families in Japan today have at least one car of their own, a lot of them don't actually use it everyday.
Some cars spend most of their time sitting in garages. On average, we drive our own cars as little as one hour a day. That's a waste of money, isn't it? To save costs, some people came up with the idea of "car sharing." Instead of owning our own car, which costs money everyday, we can share cars and only pay money when we use them. This is the car sharing system.
In Switzerland, a leader in car sharing, almost 40,000 people have joined a car share system, and borrow and return cars at 800 places across the country. In this system, people who drive less than 10,000 kilometers a year can reduce their driving costs. This is because they only have to pay for the basic fees and charges based on the actual travel distance. Meanwhile, when people own their own cars, they need to pay taxes, car inspection fees, parking fees, repair costs and so on. Since this system reduces household expenses, more and more people are starting to do car sharing.
Recently in Japan, efforts to promote car sharing have been seen throughout the country. After all, the main point is not having a car but being able to use a car when we want to, isn't it?
Car sharing is the beginning of a new idea in transportation in which we can use a service we need, without buying a product--a car.
From kidsforfuture.net
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Electric car
The electric car is a vehicle that utilizes chemical energy stored in rechargeable battery packs, and electric motors and motor controllers instead of an internal combustion engine (ICE).
Vehicles using both electric motors and ICEs (hybrid electric vehicles) are examples of hybrid vehicles, and are not considered pure electric vehicles (EVs) because they operate in a charge-sustaining mode. Hybrid vehicles with batteries that can be charged externally to displace some or all of their ICE power and gasoline fuel are called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and are pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs) during their charge-depleting mode. Electric vehicles include automobiles, light trucks, and neighborhood electric vehicles.
Electric cars were among the earliest automobiles. They produce no exhaust fumes, and minimal pollution if charged from most forms of renewable energy. Many are capable of acceleration exceeding that of conventional vehicles, are quiet, and do not produce noxious fumes. Electric cars reduce dependence on petroleum and decrease or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, depending on how their electricity is produced.
Historically, EVs and PHEVs have had issues with high battery costs, limited travel distance between battery recharging, charging time, and battery lifespan, which have limited widespread adoption. Ongoing battery technology advancements have addressed many of these problems; many models have recently been prototyped, and a handful of future production models have been announced. Toyota, Honda, Ford and General Motors all produced electric cars in the 1990s in order to comply with the California Air Resources Board's Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate. The major US automobile manufacturers have been accused of deliberately sabotaging their electric vehicle production efforts.[1][2]
Electric cars are expected to be cheaper to make and maintain than internal combustion engine vehicles because they have many fewer parts[citation needed]. Using regenerative braking, a feature which is standard on many electric and hybrid vehicles, a significant portion of the energy expended during acceleration may be recovered during braking, increasing the efficiency of the vehicle.[3][4]
In general terms an electric car is a rechargeable battery electric vehicle. Other examples of rechargeable electric vehicles are ones that store electricity in ultracapacitors, or in a flywheel.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vehicles using both electric motors and ICEs (hybrid electric vehicles) are examples of hybrid vehicles, and are not considered pure electric vehicles (EVs) because they operate in a charge-sustaining mode. Hybrid vehicles with batteries that can be charged externally to displace some or all of their ICE power and gasoline fuel are called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and are pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs) during their charge-depleting mode. Electric vehicles include automobiles, light trucks, and neighborhood electric vehicles.
Electric cars were among the earliest automobiles. They produce no exhaust fumes, and minimal pollution if charged from most forms of renewable energy. Many are capable of acceleration exceeding that of conventional vehicles, are quiet, and do not produce noxious fumes. Electric cars reduce dependence on petroleum and decrease or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, depending on how their electricity is produced.
Historically, EVs and PHEVs have had issues with high battery costs, limited travel distance between battery recharging, charging time, and battery lifespan, which have limited widespread adoption. Ongoing battery technology advancements have addressed many of these problems; many models have recently been prototyped, and a handful of future production models have been announced. Toyota, Honda, Ford and General Motors all produced electric cars in the 1990s in order to comply with the California Air Resources Board's Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate. The major US automobile manufacturers have been accused of deliberately sabotaging their electric vehicle production efforts.[1][2]
Electric cars are expected to be cheaper to make and maintain than internal combustion engine vehicles because they have many fewer parts[citation needed]. Using regenerative braking, a feature which is standard on many electric and hybrid vehicles, a significant portion of the energy expended during acceleration may be recovered during braking, increasing the efficiency of the vehicle.[3][4]
In general terms an electric car is a rechargeable battery electric vehicle. Other examples of rechargeable electric vehicles are ones that store electricity in ultracapacitors, or in a flywheel.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Saturday, May 3, 2008
OfficeMax Unveils Line of TerraCycle's Made-from-Waste Office Products
By GreenerDesign Staff, GreenerDesign
Published May 2, 2008
NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- The pencil cases in OfficeMax's newest retail offerings may look surprisingly familiar, even nostalgic to some shoppers. The cases are made from discarded containers of Capri Sun, the juice pouch more frequently seen on playgrounds than on end-caps.
The cases are just one of the new products for sale at OfficeMax stores nationwide created by TerraCycle, a company making innovative products from "waste-stream" materials like juice packages, plastic bottles and e-waste. Among the other products that OfficeMax announced it would carry include binders made from 100 percent reused cardboard, trash cans made from recycled e-waste plastic, and non-toxic cleaning products packaged in old soda bottles.
In addition to diverting materials from the waste stream, TerraCycle's products also aim to give back to the community as well as the environment. The Capri Sun pouches used in the pencil cases, for instance, are collected as fundraisers at schools; TerraCycle pays the schools two cents per pouch, and then turns what would otherwise be garbage into a new product.
The new line of products on sale at OfficeMax is TerraCycle's opening foray into the realm of office products. TerraCycle first made waves in 2007 when it was sued by Scott's Miracle-Gro for what that company said were misleading claims for its flagship product, its worm poop fertilizers. The two companies settled the complaint in September.
TerraCycle and OfficeMax plan to work together on introducing more products to shoppers, as well as furthering fundraising and educational efforts around reuse and recycling of waste products.
Published May 2, 2008
NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- The pencil cases in OfficeMax's newest retail offerings may look surprisingly familiar, even nostalgic to some shoppers. The cases are made from discarded containers of Capri Sun, the juice pouch more frequently seen on playgrounds than on end-caps.
The cases are just one of the new products for sale at OfficeMax stores nationwide created by TerraCycle, a company making innovative products from "waste-stream" materials like juice packages, plastic bottles and e-waste. Among the other products that OfficeMax announced it would carry include binders made from 100 percent reused cardboard, trash cans made from recycled e-waste plastic, and non-toxic cleaning products packaged in old soda bottles.
In addition to diverting materials from the waste stream, TerraCycle's products also aim to give back to the community as well as the environment. The Capri Sun pouches used in the pencil cases, for instance, are collected as fundraisers at schools; TerraCycle pays the schools two cents per pouch, and then turns what would otherwise be garbage into a new product.
The new line of products on sale at OfficeMax is TerraCycle's opening foray into the realm of office products. TerraCycle first made waves in 2007 when it was sued by Scott's Miracle-Gro for what that company said were misleading claims for its flagship product, its worm poop fertilizers. The two companies settled the complaint in September.
TerraCycle and OfficeMax plan to work together on introducing more products to shoppers, as well as furthering fundraising and educational efforts around reuse and recycling of waste products.
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