More Ways to Save on Gas

Can you imagine life without your car? Okay, you in the cities with great mass transportation (that you use) or where everything is within walking distance (and you walk). I'm talking about those of us in suburbs, or out in the country, or in towns or cities that have mass transit but it's inconvenient, or stops early, or doesn't go where you need to go.

Most people I know have and drive cars every day. So, for that majority, can you imagine life without your car? I certainly cannot.

It's hard when we want something, to not want it, isn't it? To stop wanting, to be happy with what we have, to WANT what we have, to be satisfied.

Every single day, if you watch TV, you are bombarded by commercials for cars, trucks, furniture, more, more, and still more.

It's a trick, though. It's a mental game. It's totally within your control to choose what you want. And I will bet that what you want is to save money. I know that's what I want! Yes, I drool over the Charger and Camero, but... I want financial freedom, more, and that includes spending less on running my car, whether it's gas, ethanol, water, or vegetable oil.

It seems to me that the only way we can get the price of gasoline to go lower, is to lower our demand for it. Some people promote ethanol, but that is driving up price of corn and taking land away from growing food for you, me, our children, the world. We are replacing one dependency with another.

We need to shift our priorities. Shift the focus. Do the hard thing: change our lifestyles. Until we change our habits and reduce our consuming ways, we are going to have issues with rising gas prices, rising food prices, and seemingly stagnant salaries. We are hurting ourselves. We need to want less.

You might not think that plastic contributes to the high cost of gasoline, but research shows that it does. According to ecology center, "most packaging plastics are made from the same natural gas used in homes to heat water and cook."

Recycling plastic seems a good idea, that recycling would save on manufacturing plastic and so save natural gas back for those other uses (heating water, cooking). In reality, however, plastic recycling is something of a myth, largely because it is very labor intensive. Why so labor intensive? Because different containers and packaging are made of different kinds of resin; they are different kinds of plastic.

Consider the research results of ecology center: "None of the recovered plastic containers from Berkeley are being made into containers again but into new secondary products such as textiles, parking lot bumpers, or plastic lumber - all unrecyclable products. This does not reduce the use of virgin materials in plastic packaging."

So what if, instead of buying plastic and throwing it away (if "recycling" isn't really recycling, after all), what if we reduce how much we buy to start with? It is the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle" that we need to focus our attention on.

You've probably heard about using water to run your car, but ... doesn't that sound suspect? I mean, if that were true, then why are we still buying gasoline? Why aren't all cars running on water?? What's WRONG with us!?

Here's the thing. It's not pure water. Your car still needs gasoline for some functions, just like hybrid gas/electric cars. There are a few vehicles out there that run only on batteries (electricity), but they don't go far before needing recharging. And there's not necessarily a plug handy every 30-40 miles.

So I did some research. I wanted to know what exactly water-for-gas was. I found the answer, and explain it here. (Note: the link takes you to a lens that earns 100% for charity ~ I wanted to share truth and not promote claims to be weeded out or clumped together with all the other claims.)

I'm taking off my rose-colored glasses, really looking to see how big my carbon footprint is, and what I can (and let's be real, what I WILL) do to make it smaller.

My goal is less on recycling and more on reducing. If I use less to start with, then there is less to recycle. Reusing is a form of recycling that I want to do more of, but again, perhaps the key is to use less in the first place!

I have to admit to something: I don't recycle. I know, I know! I'm a horrible person! There, okay, it's said, now you think bad things about me, and now I'll move on to what I am doing.

What I AM doing to reduce how much gas and oil I use: I plan my car trips so that I run errands and do shopping on the way home from work, never on the weekends. I always car pool with friends when we're going out ~ the one farthest picks up the other(s) on the way to wherever we're headed. I keep the heat low in the winter (snuggling under an old quilt on the couch is cozy) and keep it a little warmer in the summer ~ ceiling fans and iced tea help!

Aside from these, I've recently begun focusing in on two other things I can do to help reduce the global use of oil and gas. One is, reducing how much meat I eat. The other is reducing how much plastic I use.

Don't get me wrong ~ I am a true carnivore. Give me beef day or night and I'm happy. Nothing is better than the smell of a steak on the grill..... or cook me a great chicken casserole and I'm your puppy for life. Sausage, pork chops, steak, hamburger, chicken ~ I love it all. But... maybe I can eat less of it. I still eat meat every day, but I've cut the portions down to 1/4-1/3 of my former intake. Eating less means buying less, which means throwing away less packaging.

Not to mention... eating less meat. In O Magazine's April 2008 issue, they have the following little blurb: "According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock industry accounts for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, largely produced by manure, flatulence, and belching. Animal waste, pesticides, hormones, and fertilizers pollute water resources. Livestock, and the farm acreage devoted to feeding them, occupy 30 percent of the earth's land surface--but you can give meat less space on your plate. Consider scaling back your portion sizes, or going meatless once in a while" (page 68).

Eating less meat means reducing demand. REDUCE, reuse, recycle.

As for plastic ~ what a great thing plastic is! I've been a fan ever since I picked up the first jar or bottle of whatever (water, soda, mayonnaise, whatever) and realized it was in plastic instead of glass. How light that seemed! I could carry more, I could drop (by accident) and not break, I could hold without (much) fear or the thing slipping.... it met so many needs. But then... it was empty and I threw it away. Not recycling. It's come to me recently how much plastic I use and throw away. Even if I recycled, that's a lot of waste. Seems better to use less in the first place.

But how do these reduce my dependence on oil? Read on....

Did you know, it takes a cup of gasoline to produce one hamburger patty? And 600 gallons of water? According to National Geographic's Green Guide, the average mouthful of food in the United States travels over 1400 miles, using 54 calories of fossil fuels for every calorie of food. By far, the majority of this is to grow and ship meat.

Just let that sink in a bit....

Plastic ~ not the worst offender, but not exactly the friend we thought.

Take plastic bags you get at the grocery store, for example. Lightweight, very convenient, reusable! But in O Magazine's April 2008 issue, they say it takes some 12 million barrels of oil a year to make those plastic bags. For the record, it is equally appalling for paper bags: more than 14 million trees per year (page 68).

Eventually the plastic bag you use and reuse gets torn and you must throw it out, or you see they've multiplied like rabbits and you become overrun with them! And you throw them out.

Maybe you find a place that recycles these plastic bags. Hooray! There are stores that take back their bags, and that is to be encouraged. However, according to Canada's environmental information portal, The Green Pages, "plastic bags are awkward to handle and expensive to recycle, because they are so light. Depending on size and weight, it can take up to 150,000 bags to make a tonne. Collecting, baling and shipping all those bags uses a lot of energy and costs money."

As for those that get into the landfills instead of expensive recycling efforts, it can take over 1,000 years for just one to decompose. Think about all those plastic bags in your house/car/desk drawer/closet. Better yet, look here to see what 60,000 plastic bags look like, which, according to Chris Jordan, photographer of this project, is how many bags we use in the US in just FIVE SECONDS! (The plastic bag photo is near the bottom of the page).

Again, it is better to REDUCE the demand for plastic. You can take your own bag to the grocery store to take home your goods. Mesh bags, canvas bags, even the same plastic bags are good.