Monday, October 18, 2010

How To Save The Environment While Operating Your Motor Vehicle

There are many steps you can take to help out the environment while operating your vehicle. Here are some easy tips that will make a huge impact on Mother Earth's survival. If every vehicle owner in the world followed some or all of these practices the world would be a cleaner place.

Recycling plays a huge part with motor vehicles when it comes to engine oil, antifreeze and parts. One can only imagine how many millions of gallons of oil gets used in vehicles every year. Once recycled, that oil supplies millions of motor vehicles all over again rather than being dumped on the ground. The same goes for antifreeze which is toxic and can contaminate soil for decades.

Car parts are better off being repaired but if you must replace a part, make sure the old part is returned to the vendor so you can get the core charge back in your wallet. If you try and throw the part in the garbage you don't get your core charge money back. That's a great incentive program.

Stick to regular maintenance tips like servicing your battery and rotating tires. These practices extend their life and decrease replacement intervals. Remanufactured parts cost much less than new parts and take less energy (emissions) to produce compared to original equipment manufacturerd parts.

Head down to the local car wash to wash your car. The soaps and waxes you use could end up down the storm drain. Car washes use much less water which is recycled and treated (federal regulations) before entering the regular water supply.

For the extra conscientious motorist: synthetic oil, long life antifreeze and organic brake pads (if applicable to your vehicle) are great ways to extend replacement intervals. Oil change intervals can go 3 times longer, extended antifreeze will last for hundreds of thousands of miles & organic brake pads won't harm the environment as they wear down.

So as you can see there is a way to contribute to saving our environment if you drive a motor vehicle. Little steps add up to big ones and if everyone contributed we would end up with one heck of a big footprint.

Happy Motoring!

1 comment :

Leo said...

That was a really informative post, thank you! I really like the core charge idea also, even though sometimes its not very much. I bought a battery one time and I didn't know what to do with it and might have just thrown it in the garbage or something. It was then that I read the receipt of the new battery and it said it would take my old battery and give me back a little money, so that was the first time I found out about that program haha.