5
Ways to Cut Your Car's Carbon Emission |
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With so much talk about biodiesel fuel, hybrids,
and hydrogen powered cars, it may seem like you
can't use your old car at all if you're
concerned about the environment. While a
lifestyle change is probably inevitable for all
of us eventually, there are many things we can
do until eco-friendly models make our
gas-powered cars of today obsolete.
Granted, decreasing how much and how often we
drive is the best solution for our eco-system
conundrum, but since we can't give up driving
all together, consider the following five easy
ways to decrease your car's environmental
impact:
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Service Your Car Regularly |
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Getting your car serviced regularly will help
you and the environment. You'll increase your
fuel efficiency, decrease your greenhouse gas
emissions, and add to your car's life. Getting
your oil changed on time is great, but having
your car checked for problems regularly is even
better. When your car gets checked out,
mechanics can spot problems (like a broken
thermostat, low transmission fluid, sticky brake
calipers, or even a dirty air filter) early on.
If you can't remember when your car was checked
out last, take it in. Even if you only increase
your mileage by 10%, that's still a difference:
a difference that can save you up to $200 in a
year, which is more than enough to pay for the
inspection.
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Check Your Tires |
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If you've heard it once, you've heard it a
hundred times: it's not good to be driving
around on under-inflated tires. Then again,
over-inflating your tires isn't the solution;
what you really need to do is buy a
tire-pressure gauge and check your tires at
least once a week. Why, you ask? Read on,
grasshopper.
Under-inflated tires are bad because they
increase the friction between your rubber and
the road, and all that friction accounts for
horrible gas mileage as well as increased carbon
emissions. Over-inflating your tires might seem
like a solution that won't have you checking
your tires quite so often, but, in fact,
over-inflating will jeopardize your car's
handling and possibly cause a tire blow out. Not
a good option.
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Skip the Drive-Thru |
A friend of mine was telling me how he went to a
fast food establishment the other day, and after
finally reaching the drive-thru microphone after
20 minutes of waiting, he was told the place was
closed. So not only did he not get his food, he
just spent 20 minutes sending carbon emissions
from his car into the atmosphere! Talk about a
lose-lose situation.
If he'd skipped the drive-thru, he probably
would have gotten better service, and he'd have
had lessened his environmental impact. Even if
you are pretty lucky when hitting drive-thrus,
you're likely still idling more than you
realize. If you spend just 5 minutes in the
drive-thru for lunch each weekday, that's a
total of 1300 minutes, or more than 21 hours, a
year!
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Scrape That Windshield |
Usually cold weather is the best excuse we have
to leave our cars idling for 10 minutes. The car
needs to warm up, and besides, that ice on the
windshield needs to melt before you can drive
off, right? Wrong.
As much as we like to jump into a warm car on a
cold winter day, the car is perfectly capable of
driving off without 'warming up.' The only
exceptions to this rule are if you drive an
older model car or if your car has been sitting
out in sub-zero temperatures overnight. As for
your windshield, it might be nice to merely turn
on your wipers to clear the melted frost away,
but good old-fashioned elbow grease works too.
Break out your eco-friendly windshield scraper
and scrape that ice away!
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Slow Down |
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Believe it or not, by slowing down you're not
only more likely to arrive at your destination
in one piece, you'll definitely get better gas
mileage. Starting and stopping quickly are bad
ideas too; studies actually show that
accelerating and decelerating abruptly is not
only horrible for your fuel efficiency, it
increases wear and tear on your car.
Keeping your speeds down even has the math to
back it up. Because wind resistance builds up so
much with higher speeds, every mile per hour you
drive over 55 decreases your fuel economy by 2%.
That means, unfortunately, that if you're
driving 80 mph, even on the freeway, you've cut
your fuel economy by half, which not only hurts
the environment, it hurts your wallet too.
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