First Post!

Hey Brian, glad to see someone else in this forum. I'm not necessarily a tree hugger, but I consider myself someone who is trying to make choices for a sustainable future.

Things like recycling, buying locally grown produce, energy efficiency in our home. Like we recently installed new hardwood floors and used bamboo flooring instead of maple or oak.

I too like to walk whenever possible. Including to work, which is four miles each way. But that just isn't feasible during the extreme heat in the summer so I got the Prius.

 

I always do my best to keep the planet in good shape. Every day a new article comes along about how we've irreversably done something to our planet, and today's is the 'dead zones' in the ocean, where nothing can survive and grow.

Anyways, buying a Prius - it's great because it's a fun car, and lots of techie oriented stuff to it - but most importantly, next to buying a house, it's the biggest purchase I can make and point out that I want to make a difference, I want things to change. Because of silly politics and middle eastern ties that run deeper than we all care to know, we consume oil at an alarming rate. This car allows us to significantly cut back on that dependancy, without having to sacrifice (most importantly, actually gain) the 'fun' aspect of driving. All around it works out great!

-m.

 

I have tried to be personally more responsible in the use of energy and resources for many years. We have added insulation to our home and invested in the most energy efficient appliances when making replacements. We have always grown 90% of our own fruits and vegetables in a relatively small but very intensive garden. It just seems like the right way to live. I really like to read the Mother Earth News magazine, and I'm hoping to get into chicken farming for our own use when I 'semi-retire' in a few years. The Prius is the only car that makes sense to me.
I do not believe that we can force people through legislation to conserve energy. Education is the key. Personal choice is the route. Enough well-educated people, making enough of the right choices, will change the course of society.

 

There are a few hardy souls who bicycle in winter here in Fargo, North Dakota. You can actually get studded snow tires for your bike. I've always been chicken to cycle in town.

I'm environmentalist enough to enjoy feeling green because I bought a Prius. But I have to admit that really being green would require a level of committment few of us have: it would mean arranging to live walking (or bicycling) distance from work, eliminating trash-production from our lifestyles, keeping the heat at 60 degrees in winter and doing without AC in summer. It would mean eating food grown with animal traction rather than motorized traction and manure rather than petro-chemicals like anhydrous ammonia. Etc., etc., etc. It would mean, in short, a lifestyle utterly foreign to most Americans.

A friend commented the other day that most of us are just one or two generations removed from an outhouse. In a short few years we have attained an enormously more comfortable lifestyle; one which it might not be possible to maintain for more than another generation or two.

Even we Prius drivers will be known, in 50 years from now, as the generation that squandered it all for future generations. Mea culpa, too.

I just hope it lasts for the rest of my natural life. Meanwhile, I'll point the finger of blame at all the folks driving less-efficient cars than mine, and make excuses when the bicyclists point their fingers of blame at me. (I'll say I can't cycle, on account of my bum knee.)

 

I do care about the planet I live on. I have CF's in every light in the house. As I've remodeled the place, care has been taken to improve the insulating ability of the house - especially on the outside, where colours of the siding and roof were chosen to reflect as much heat as possible due to my southern location.

That said, I take into account the overall impact of an activity. I like snowmobiling as one example. The two stroke engine is obviously not the cleanest engine design around. However, the amount of use that one gets with me, is inconsequential in the grand sheme of things.

IMO, there is the sad reality of environmentalists, losing focus on what the real goal is in protecting the environment. The result is an increasing amount of extremist types of behaviour, where the only acceptable answer is to ban, ban, ban any activity that they do not personally sign off on as "green."

 

This is a good topic - thanks for opening it for us. I try to be aware of environmental impact and do some of the basics like recycling, but buying a Prius is the best thing yet to focus on it every time I am in the car. My car draws attention everywhere, so I get to explain how economical it is and how much fun to drive, and by the way, think of the low emissions and help for the environment. I don't make a big deal of it but I get to push awareness of environmental issues consistently. I think that a large proportion of the US population is motivated by economics by necessity, and when gas prices get high enough, the demand for hybrids will increase dramatically (aren't we already seeing that?). The price of gas is a big discussion here in Oklahoma now, even though gas prices here tend to be low since Okla. is an oil-producing state.
Ellen

 

It seems most of the people here are no tree huggers, obvious because a recent article in the newspaper stated that building a personal computer (with monitor) is rather polluting...

Anyway, I try to help the environment as much as possible: save some natural gas by putting on a sweater instead of turning up the heating in house, use as little water as possible, buy so-called 'biological' products (meat, vegetables, fruit) if choice is available. That sort of thing.

Now with buying a Prius the main reason was fuel economy, it made it possible for me to drive a petrol car instead of a diesel car. However during the test drives I made, I notice how much diesel/gas goes to waste when cars are just standing still! I guess being a Prius owner (or almost) makes you more environmentally aware.

 

Once upon a time a fellow talked about seeing the speck in someone else's eye while ignoring the log in your own eye. We all (myself included!) are indignant about the sins of others, while our own seem unimportant or excusable.

What we have in common on this board is that we are just as smug as can be about driving the most efficient family car on the planet. But every one of us is still using ten or a hundred times as much fossil fuel, due to our lifestyle choices, as the average human on the planet. and we're probably using ten or a hundred times as much as our grandparents did.

Hey! Look at me! I'm such a responsible citizen that I drive a Prius! Well, until late in his life my grandfather never had a car at all. And he never had a snowmobile, or a snowblower or any of the other gadgets we take for granted, and consider our god-given right.

It's not much of a sacrifice to drive the coolest car in the universe.

 

I'm with you there. My grandparents had a

So what do we do?

Really, I want some help in making more positive choices for a sustainable future.

Besides recycling and making better product choices to reduce packaging, buying locally grown or manufactured products, what else should I be doing?

I'm looking for help.

Can we start a thread here with tips about this?

 

I don't think anyone's being smug around here; if I had to pick an operative word for PriusChat, I think it'd be "enthusiasm".

But I fully agree with the need to look around and see where I can do better regarding transportation, fuel conservation and the environment -- looking to see where the effort/cost will do the most good, as well as being practical and with minimum side-effects.

The best thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is carpooling / vanpooling, and/or walking or biking when practical. I can walk to the pub that's 10 blocks away (it's finding my way back that's the problem. :mrgreen: )

Still, I think the Prius can make a significant contribution -- not just for fuel economy and low emmisions, but because of it's quality and good engineering. I bought my first car 18 years ago, and it's been my one and only since then. I'm hoping that the Prius (with regular maintenance and updates to components over time) will last me 10+ years as well.

Long-lasting cars means fewer cars (and their components) in landfills, eventually. And I think that can be a significant factor in the equation.

 

I don't really have any answers. I am a pessimist. I think the country and the world is going you-know-where in a handbasket. I do all the yuppy things you mentioned: recycle, drive a Prius, etc. Flush less often. Etc.

But the big things, I am not willing to do. I am not willing to give up a car entirely, or indoor plumbing, or the fridge. I have friends who live in a log cabin on $5,000 a year. Wood heat. Outhouse. No fridge, Kerosene lantern instead of electric lights. One bath a week, and they share the water, before putting it on the enormous garden that they work with nothing but hand tools. I am too spoiled and too selfish to do that. I would not even have traded in my Civic for a Prius if the Prius had not been such a great car in every respect.

 

Cybele: We buy most of our clothes at thrift stores. You'd be amazed at what you find there: discontinued brands but new, great finds on casual clothes and rock bottom prices. I think it's absurd to spend 50 bucks on a shirt especially since little of it gets to the sweat shop workers who produced it.
I generally don't buy much to begin with and I hate throwing out "useable things". Buying a new computer every two years is envrironmentally damaging too as the parts in computers are both toxic and hard to dispose of. Lots of lead, mercury and toxic plastics. Much of the computer waste in this country ends up unprocessed in land fills in third world countries where there is little oppositon. When I have replaced a computer, I've found a home for my old one first (school, charitable org, etc), although there is such a glut of used computers that even the charities are reluctant to accept them. Worst problem in computer disposal are CRT monitors which apparently have a lot of lead in them.
Buy larger quantities of food from outlets like Costco. Packaging as you have so well pointed out, is a major waste of resources and the amount of packaging in a big box is less per unit of measure than in little boxes.
Rent rather than buy things that you only use occasionally. Look at how many U-Store-IT facilities there are in this country because we are up to our armpits in STUFF, most of which we only use occasionally if ever.
It's fun to think about our "environmental footprint" ...the amount each of us consumes and the waste each of us produces. I would imagine that even the purest individual American among us is the environmental equivalent of a small village in India.
I think our consumer obsession with material goods stems from some deeper alienation, but that would be a whole new chat topic.
Thanks for opening up this chat line. I hope more people participate and help spread the Prius type karma to other aspects of our lives.
Bob

 

Last year I spent substantialy more than I wanted to and bought a 4-cycle Honda trimmer.

It's a bit heavier, but is much quieter, has lots of torque at lower rpms and meets California Emission Standards (a bit more stringent that those of Washington State)

Oh- and it's built like a rock.

As to my new (10/03) Prius; I've been suprised at myself for my rather piggy attitude about MPG; at about 5,500 miles, I'm averaging around 42 to 43 MPG.

Yup, that is more than 10 MPG BELOW the EPA stats on the Prius. Yup, I wish it was more (probably will be if temps here EVER get above 60F.)

But, wait a minute! Did I ever really grasp how clean this production vehicle is?

No. Not really. So this past week I've made it a point to be more mindful about that very worthwhile attribute. And talk it up with folks who accost me on the street to ask me about my Prius.

I'd sure like to see a stat on the cumulative reduction of photosensitive hydrocarbons, nitrates and other pollutants, gallons of gasoline, barrels of oil and other positive results from JUST projected '04 Prius world sales.

It would be easy then to extrapolate that into the Highlander, RX-400h, Camry, Accord and Civic Hybrids and the Ford and Nissan products.

Have to believe the numbers would be impressive and a bulletproof (i.e. Cheney-poroof) argument for more of the same fromm ALL vehicle manufacturers.

Bob