Driving – Your Road to a Smaller Carbon Footprint

Jump to Buying a New Car that Will Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Regular driving is one of the single most polluting things that people do – needless to say this is one of the biggest factors in your carbon footprint.

A few scary facts about the effect driving has on global warming. The average car will emit about 10 tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year, about half of the total for the average American. Every gallon of gasoline that you use results in 22 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions. As scary as these may seem, it also means there are big opportunities here for you to cut your carbon footprint.

The best thing you can do is simply to cut the number of miles that you drive. Less driving = less carbon emissions. Here are a few ways to cut your driving:

carpool so there is only on car on the road instead of three or four
take public transportation whenever possible
walk, cycle, or roller blade if your destination is close
plan ahead so that you can combine trips instead of going out multiple times

These simple measures will help you reduce your miles and your carbon footprint, not to mention save a few bucks on gas.

But driving sometimes can’t be avoided, so here are a few things to keep in mind to reduce your carbon footprint and minimize the carbon emissions from the necessary trips.

Travel at modest speeds and try to drive as smoothly as possible. Big accelerations and high speeds will use more gas.
Always keep you car well maintained. Have your oil and brakes changed regularly so that your car is running as efficiently as possible.
Don’t use your car as a suitcase. Every extra 100 pounds uses another 1-2% of fuel.
Measure your tire pressure regularly. If it is too low is will use more fuel than necessary.
Park in the shade to avoid having to use your air conditioner too much
Open your windows instead of turning on the air conditioner, unless you are on the highway in which case the drag caused by open windows outweighs the energy used by your air conditioner.

Buying a New Car that will Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

If you are buying a new car, this is a chance to create a big reduction to your carbon footprint. There are a lot of things to consider when buying a new car in order to best fight global warming.

To start with, have a look at this website to see the mileage data of different cars. The site will show how many miles you get per gallon in the city and on the highway. Think about where you do most of your driving when you look at this so that you have the biggest impact on your carbon footprint. You should also research if you local or state government offers any subsidies for buying greener cars.

Right now, the best car on the market is the Toyota Prius. This is a hybrid car that gets 48mpg in the city, and 45 mpg on the highway. To put that into perspective, the stringent new fuel emissions laws in California have a minimum of 35 mpg, easily beaten by the Prius.

There are certain new technologies that will have an impact on your carbon emissions, namely hybrid cars and biofuels.

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