Cars have been getting bigger and heavier

A lot of my posts here have and will focus on simple things that you can do to help the environment. One of the biggest sources of carbon emissions is your car. This EPA Carbon Emissions Calculator can show you just how many pounds of carbon emissions your car and house cause. Changing your driving habits is a lot more invasive than recycling more but can have a huge positive impact on the environment.

Buying a more fuel efficient car can greatly reduce your carbon emissions, if you don't want to move and get a job close to a subway station. But have you noticed there really aren't too many cars that get really good gas mileage? The Prius, Insight, and Civic hybrids are great, but other than them, which cars get exceptional gas mileage? With the environment in the shape that it's in, you'd think that car companies would really be pushing 40+ mile per gallon cars since the environment is a popular issue now. But we're bombarded with car ads boasting SUV's that get 20 miles per gallon, and big cars that get 30 miles per gallon, like 20 and 30 miles per gallon are actually good numbers.

Technology has advanced so much in the past 20 years, yet the cars from 20 years ago got as good if not better gas mileage than most of today's cars. Why is that? As this AP news article points out, the weight of the average vehicle sold in the U.S. has increased 923 pounds, and the average vehicle's horsepower has increased by 105 since 1987. While I won't comment on the increase in horsepower (who doesn't like more horsepower?), the increase in weight is pretty staggering. A lot of this is from SUV's becoming so popular, they are significantly heavier than cars. But, cars have gotten a lot bigger as well. When I park my relatively new compact car next to a late 80's Corolla or Civic, my car looks much bigger! And a new Honda Accord looks really big parked next to a late 80's Taurus. Take a look at the Wikipedia Honda Civic article, and compare the third generation to the present generation. The third generation (1984-1987) was 150"l x 64"w x 53"h, and the current generation coupe comes in at 175"l x 69"w x 54"h. That's over two feet longer, and five inches wider!

Why don't the car companies make smaller cars? Some of us who care about the environment would take smaller back seats and trunks for better gas mileage. But the car companies just have very few options out there for really small cars. Sure, 35 miles per gallon highway seems pretty good, but cars from 20 years ago got better than that. With the exception of hybrids, which are still a pretty small share of the car market, there's no excuse for the car companies to not have anything that gets better gas mileage than the cars from 20 years ago did.

Where do the presidential candidates stand on environmental issues?

A really good web site that lists where all of the presidential candidates stand on tons of issues is Vote Gopher. The people at this site, which you can join and become a contributor to, scour the media for quotes and voting records for candidates on pretty much any issue you can think of, and then summarize where the candidates stand. Anyone who wants to read what the candidates actually stand for, instead of just listening to the latest gossip on the candidates that the mainstream media reports, should check this site out.

Specifically, you can read about where each candidate stands on environmental issues by going to http://www.votegopher.com/issue.php?issue=3. Click the red tab "Change Candidates" to pick different candidates to view information on. Super Tuesday is only a week away, and the "Potomac Primaries" (Virginia, Maryland, and DC) are two weeks away. If you want to make an informed choice for president, read VoteGopher!

How to stop getting catalogs in the mail

Along the same lines as my previous post about phone books, another huge source of paper waste and energy to deliver is getting catalogs in the mail. We all get a bunch of catalogs that we probably don't care about in the mail. If you're like me, most of them go straight into the recycling bin without even looking at them. While recycling them is certainly better than throwing them in the trash, the much better approach is to not get the catalogs at all. The environmental benefit of not getting a catalog versus recycling is many times better than the difference for recycling versus throwing out. But no one wants to spend the time to call up each place that you're getting a catalog from to request to be removed from their distribution list.

However, I found out about a really cool web site called Catalog Choice where you can find who you're getting a catalog from, and in two clicks request to stop getting their catalog. Catalog Choice takes care of the rest. There are a huge number of companies that are already honoring their requests, and as the site grows more and more companies will honor their requests. I would highly recommend this site to everyone, the address is http://www.catalogchoice.org/. Note that when you find a company to request removal from, you need to enter a customer number or catalog number in. The site says that it's optional, but every place that I've tried without putting this number in shows that it's been rejected, and the ones where I put this number in are all processing or removed. You can find this number on the back of the catalog above your mailing address typically.

How To Get Rid Of Phone Books

In my previous blog entry, Why I'm Starting This Blog, I said I would post an entry for what to do with phone books. Well here it is!

First of all, let me gripe a little about phone books. Why is it that every single home gets at least one huge phone book a year? We never ask the phone companies to get one or sign up for one. They just deliver them to every single house. And as if one phone book isn't bad enough, most of us get at least two different ones. Around here, we get the Verizon Yellow Pages and White Pages, and the Yellow Book. I personally haven't used a phone book in probably 8 or 9 years, any time I need to find a phone number or business I use the Internet. And while I know a lot of people, probably most, use the phone book to find businesses, a large number of us have no need whatsoever for a phone book. Yet the phone company still prints these 2000 page books and goes to the effort of delivering one to every house. Everyone knows that it takes lots and lots of trees to print these. But what about the energy it takes to make the paper, print the books, and deliver the books to everyone?

But worse yet, what is everyone supposed to do with last year's phone book? I see nothing on the cover, back, or first few pages of the book saying where to recycle the phone book. The phone companies are the ones who print these and make all the advertising money, the least they could do is have a program to come and pick up old phone books a week or so after delivering new phone books. I can't find accurate stats on what percentage of phone books get recycled, but I'm sure there are still a large portion of phone books that get thrown in the trash. So much energy gets lost because of this. All of that potentially recyclable paper is permanently disposed of, which means that more energy will be spent making new paper instead of processing recycled paper. And then energy is wasted transporting all of those phone books to your local landfill.

The best solution would be for people who don't want phone books to be able to opt out. Recycling phone books is great but that still takes a lot of energy. If you don't need a phone book, you shouldn't get one. Or at least let people pick which phone book they want instead of getting all. This blog entry, http://www.commoncraft.com/how-stop-receiving-phone-books-and-yellow-pages, has some phone numbers that you can call to not get phone books in the future. I'd be skeptical of this though. The phone book distributors just drop one at every house, they're not looking off of a list for who to deliver one to (evidenced by the fact that people without land lines still get phone books). So what are the chances that they would remember to NOT drop one off at your house? If anyone knows if calling these numbers works or not, please comment!

So when you're stuck with a phone book that you want to get rid of, RECYCLE IT! YellowBook has a link to Earth911 with specific places that you can recycle a phone book at http://corporate.yellowbook.com/recycling/. Just enter your zip code in. Earth911 is a great place to find locations to recycle just about anything.

For those of you here in Arlington, you can drop phone books off in the Mixed Paper dumpsters at one of the two recycling drop off centers. The first is at 530 North Quincy Street, near the Ballston Mall, and the other is at Columbia Pike and South Four Mile Run.

Why I'm Starting This Blog

When I came home from work one day, there was a huge phone book sitting outside my door. Each condo door up the entire hall had one. I have no use whatsoever for a phone book, that's what the Internet is for. I never asked to get a phone book, never signed up to get one, yet here is this hulking 2,000 page monstrosity sitting outside my door. So what am I supposed to do with this stupid thing? And if I actually found a phone book useful, what am I supposed to with last year's? Nothing on the cover, back, or first few pages says anything about recycling phone books. The condo building that I'm in has recycling, but the only paper that they accept is newspapers, so I assume if I threw the phone book in there it would get thrown in the trash at some later point. And, I don't see anything on the phone book about how to request to not get another phone book next year.

If I was like most Americans, I'd just throw it in the trash. But I usually try to think about the environment, so I'll look up on the Internet how to recycle phone books in this area. To hopefully make researching things like this a little easier for everyone else, I decided to start posting things that I find out about the environment and how to help, like what to do with phone books that you don't want.

A blog entry will be coming about what to actually do with phone books. The phone book is just sitting on my floor now, I'm a little lazy and it will probably sit there for several days before I decide to look up what to do with it and post that here.

More about Brent

First, let me talk a little about myself. I'm a software engineer living with my wife in a condo in Arlington, Virginia, USA, which is a pretty environmentally friendly county (at least compared to the other counties in the area) and lead a pretty normal life. I started really paying attention to the environment probably about 3 years ago, when I came to the realization that we as people really need to change our ways our we'll be totally screwed. Nothing in particular made me come to that realization, just reading article after article about how the icecaps are melting, that the measurements for amount of ice loss right now is much higher than most scientists worst case scenarios from even just 10-15 years ago, and that things will get really really bad for most people around the world. I don't consider myself an environmental activist, and I really don't spend much effort on "saving the environment". I don't compost, I drive a regular non hybrid car to work by myself, and I don't buy carbon offsets. But I do try to consider the environment for things in my life (whether or not to throw a box out versus break it down to recycle it, where to move to, etc.), and I think it's easy to lead a "greener" life.

We will all have to start leading greener lives, or we're going to screw the world up much worse than we already have.