December 5th, 2010 
Tushar Mathur 
If you’re anything like the average person, then you don’t have a burning desire to destroy the planet. In fact, you’re probably pretty benevolent, and want to do your best to live in harmony with a healthy world. I think that this is the reality for most of us – we’re nice people!
The trouble is that we get confronted with the choice between convenience and environment. It just takes too long to walk to the shops, or it’s raining too much to ride to work, or we have too much to carry to go on the train. So, we hop in our car, and away we go, polluting the atmosphere with every revolution of our wheels on the bitumen.
No doubt one of our comforting thoughts is that we’re only 1 person with 1 car. There’s so many other people and cars out there that even if we had an environmentally friendly approach to transport, then all the other people would still be driving their polluting put puts, and our actions would make little difference. However, the difficulty can be found in the fact that we all have the “small drop in a big ocean” attitude – but unfortunately lots of small drops make a torrential thunderstorm.
Let’s for a moment imagine that we do have a choice to do something different. Let’s imagine that we can drive around in relative luxury whilst doing our best to be nice to the environment. How would we do this? Well I’ve compiled a list of 10 things you could do to be a good commuter. If you’re already doing this then congratulations! If you can see room for improvement in your vehicular behaviour then I hope that this list provides a little inspiration.
No.1 – Abstain
We’ve got to face it. The most effective solution would be to not drive a car. Period. But for the reasons mentioned above this shouldn’t really be given that much credence; it just doesn’t scale on a global basis, and it’s not something that all of us can follow all of the time. Nevertheless, it’s on the list because it works.
No. 2 – Car pool
This is really a similar sort of creature to its cousin ‘Abstain’ above. I’ve heard this one bandied around the media since I was a kid, but in reality it conflicts with our overwhelming desire for convenience that permeates most of our actions. Plus, sometimes car pooling just isn’t possible – we often want to go to different places at different times. However, again this is something that does have positive effects when it’s put into practice, so it too makes the list.
No. 3 – Drive a small vehicle
This is a good idea. Unfortunately, I’m 206cms tall (6’9” in the old scale). That’s all I’m going to say on this one…
No. 4 – Drive a cooking oil car
I remember seeing a news article a while back where people were taking the concept of recycling to new heights by converting their cars to run on used vegetable oil, and harvesting the waste products from local restaurants to provide their fuel source. I must admit it’s a pretty nifty idea, but the cold hard fact is that there just isn’t enough used vegetable oil available to power the glut of vehicles on our roads. The Bioethanol and Biodiesel concept is definitely more feasible for mass production, but that has some serious environmental and social drawbacks in the form of deforestation and food supply impacts.
No. 5 – Drive a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle
The idea of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles had me captivated for a number of years. I dreamt of driving one of these modern marvels, and was looking forward to the day in which they entered mass production. However, the day doesn’t really seem to have arrived as quickly as I envisaged, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles still seem to predominantly exist in the concept car stage. There seems to be a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the infrastructure for hydrogen refuelling stations doesn’t exist, and this presents itself as a massive impediment to the widespread adoption of fuel cell vehicles, both in terms of costs and timeframes. Secondly, elemental hydrogen doesn’t exist in natural abundance on earth (it’s bound together with other elements in compounds), so it has to be extracted artificially. The process of creating hydrogen requires energy, which either comes from fossil fuels with their associated environmental problems, or from renewable electricity through the process of electrolysis. The problem with creating hydrogen from renewable electricity is that it introduces inherent inefficiencies into the production chain – it involves using electricity to produce hydrogen to produce electricity again. In many ways, it makes more sense to use the electricity directly.
No. 6 – Drive an electric vehicle
Ok now we’re getting serious. According to myelectriccar.com.au there are some serious benefits to be had from driving an electric car. Namely, they’re cheaper to run, they’re better for our health due to improved air quality, they result in reduced smog visibility impairment due to cleaner air, they reduce CO2 emissions that cause global warming (even when powered by coal fired electricity due to the lower levels of C02 produced from burning coal than from burning petrol), they produce less noise, and their lithium ion batteries can be considered eco batteries because they’re fully recyclable. That’s a pretty impressive list of benefits! What’s more, the models of electric cars that are coming out today are just awesome. Check out the Electric Lightning GT for an environmentally friendly car that looks more like a sports demon than an eco-mobile. Of course, there are also plenty of less ostentatious models on the market for the more cost conscious consumer, and electric vehicle conversions can also be performed on combustion engine models too.
No. 7 – Drive a hybrid
The market for hybrid vehicles is really coming into its own now. The Toyota Prius is still the world’s top selling hybrid vehicle, and it does a good job of cutting back on emissions. According the Toyota website the Prius achieves fuel economy of 3.9 litres per 100 kilometres. Not bad, not bad at all. The price has also been coming down considerably since the car first launched in Japan in 1997. However, despite the relative benefits of the Prius and its peers, hybrids are still facing stiff competition from other vehicle types, not least of which is the diesel engine.
No. 8 – Drive a diesel
One of my fondest driving memories is of tearing down the German Autobahn’s in a Volkswagen Passat. We were ripping along at more than 200 km/h, and achieving fantastic fuel economy while we were at it. I’d never before seen anything like the sort of fuel economy that this incredible piece of machinery was delivering. I had the good fortune of repeating the experience in the USA a few years ago (minus the exhilarating speeds) when I again drove a Passat around the country. These two experiences gave me a firm love for the new breed of diesel engines that were exploding onto the stage, and marked an extreme deviation from my previous impression of diesels as being old, lumbering, 4WD type vehicles like my Dad’s ageing Toyota Landcruiser. The RAC confirms the fuel consumption credentials of the modern diesel in their overview of the Top 20 most fuel efficient cars when they state “Out of the 20 cars, only two have petrol engines, two are petrol/electric models and the rest are diesel.”
No. 9 – Environmentally friendly car detailing
This might seem like it’s a little out of left field, but it’s an important consideration. The point here is that everything we do with our car has an impact on the environment – not just what type of fuel we use. Most of us know that it’s important to be environmentally conscious when we dispose of our car batteries, change our engine oil, or replace our car tyres, but it’s a little less common to be thinking of green credentials when we’re looking for car detailing services. However this is definitely an area in which we can continue to minimise our ecological footprint, and it centres around two main concerns. Firstly, it’s important to think about where the runoff from the car wash is going – what we want to avoid is for untreated runoff to be entering the storm water system. This car wash runoff is high in nutrients, oils, and heavy metals, and all of these are bad for the ecosystem as they promote algal blooms and poison aquatic life. Professional car detailers can minimise their environmental impact by using detergents that are friendly for the environment. They can also capture the car wash runoff and divert it into the sewer system where it is treated before entering the environment, or they can wash the car on a permeable surface such as grass or gravel. Another way in which car detailers can minimise their environmental impact is by adhering to any water restrictions that may be present in the area. This may involve utilising waterless car wash products, dependent on the condition of the vehicle.
No. 10 – Offset your car emissions
I’ve got a confession to make. Out of all of the ways to drive an environmentally friendly car that I’ve listed so far, I only adhere to my own advice when it comes to car detailing. However, after acknowledging my own failings, here’s where I save my reputation – I also offset all of my car’s C02 emissions. This is the single most important thing that I do to be an environmentally friendly driver. I’ve done this every year since 2006, and to be honest it gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling that in a purely selfish way I wouldn’t want to stop. I offset my travel through an organisation called Carbon Neutral, by calculating my CO2 emissions on their website, and then paying Carbon Neutral to plant trees on my behalf which sequester the carbon I’m producing through my activities. Sequestering carbon through tree planting delivers the added benefits of providing habitat for fauna and reducing salinity degradation, so it really feels like a good solution. At some point I would definitely like to drive an electric vehicle, and to power the vehicle through solar cells on my home rooftop, but at the moment it’s just not within my financial reach. In the interim, I’m going to continue to get my car detailed in an environmentally friendly way, and offset all of the CO2 emissions that I produce whilst driving my old combustion engine around the streets.
So in summary, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve got some great options on the horizon with the dawn of the electric vehicle age, as well as some solid steps that we can take right now. Personally, I’m looking forward to the next 20 years, as I think this world is moving in the right direction. What do you think? Can we be environmentally friendly car owners, or are we all powering our way into oblivion?
This article was written by George Davidson, a mobile car detailing enthusiast with an environmental agenda.
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