Go Greener, Australia

Our car is getting old: at the time it rolled out the factory door, The Bangles had everyone walking like an Egyptian; and when we bought it Bill Clinton was still the President of the USA. So our cheap and cheerful small car is now expensive and grumpy. Its time to buy a new car.

The Union of Concerned Scientists says in their book The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices:

“Major, out-of-the-ordinary purchases have an especially important impact on your overall environmental profile. By being careful when making such consumer decisions, you can generally (even if not always) reduce environmental damage faster and more easily than through smaller, everyday actions.”

I don’t know about you, but some days I get a bit fed up with switching off lights and recycling my wine bottles - it seems like too little, too late. It feels good to do something huge instead, and make a big difference for a change.

So when it comes to buying a car, we want it to be as eco-friendly as we can manage. The UCS recommends that if you’re buying a car, you should try to choose:

• the right size for your everyday needs (ie not for your occasional holiday),
• the most fuel-efficient and least polluting in it’s class, and
• some eco-friendly features, if possible.

Our car isn’t luxurious, but it’s been a good fit for us for seven years. We usually get around 400km to a tank of petrol (about 40L) but that has been getting lower as the car gets older. This costs about $55-ish when we fill up each fortnight. We live close to the city, combine trips where possible, and I use public transport a lot. Once or twice a year we might drive it out to the country - either 500km up to Geraldton, or maybe 250km down south to Margaret River or somewhere like that.

We don’t need a large car, because we rarely carry large loads and we don’t have kids. We’re not rev-heads, so a performance vehicle isn’t what we’re after. Small to medium sized cars are a better fit for us.

So far we’ve tested a Prius (more on that later), we’re going to test-drive a Yaris (for a standard fuel-efficient model) and we’re still considering diesel and LPG alternatives. I’ll keep you posted on how we go…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 6:08 pm and is filed under transport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.