Weekly Green Challenge: Driving Habit Awareness

This week’s “Green Challenge” is actually pretty simple, in my opinion. Starting tomorrow, on Sunday, I’m going to ask that you keep a driving log until next Saturday, when the new “Green Challenge” is released. I’m going to keep a driving log too, and I’ll post it along with my reflections with next Saturday’s challenge.
    This challenge, although it’s not asking you to change any habits, will be difficult in that you’ll have to pay attention to your daily trips and remember to write them down. I designed this challenge so that you can become more aware of how much gas you’re using and how much you’re spending on gas.
Here is a model log that you can use:           

Date	Start Place	End Place	Miles Between	Car	MPG	Gallons Used	Cost of gas/gallon	Money spent

    For this challenge, keep track of every trip you take in a car, including cars that aren’t yours. If someone gives you a ride somewhere, take note of the year and model of the car so you can look up its gas mileage later. I suggest that for the “Car” column in your log, you assign each of the cars you use letters or numbers to make things easier. For example, your car could be A, your spouse’s car could be B, your friend’s car could be C, etc. You can find cars’ gas mileages at: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.shtml
    I suggest using Google Maps to calculate how many miles there are between your destinations. To calculate “Gallons Used”: divide the number of miles driven by your car’s average, or combined, mpg (miles/mpg). To calculate the cost of gas per gallon, use the price at the gas station that you frequent the most. Be sure to keep an eye on the prices throughout the week so you can record the correct price. To calculate the money you spent on a particular trip, multiply the number of gallons you used by the cost of one gallon of gas (gallons used X cost per gallon). At the end of each day, use a row of your log to add up the totals.
    Next Saturday, after you’ve kept your log for about a week, sit down with your family and look it over together. If everyone in your family kept a log, compare with each other. Then, have a discussion. With your family, evaluate the amount of gas you used and the money you spent, and then brainstorm how you can use less gas. Remember, using less gas is not only good for the environment, it’s good for your pocket. Once you have a few ideas, pretend that you can “redo” the past week and create a second log based on the first. Combine some of the trips you took, switch the cars you used around based on their mpg, and consider where you could have carpooled. After you’ve done this, compare your original log with the ideal log. If you had followed your ideal log for the past week, how much less gas would you have used? How much money would you have saved? With your family, discuss what you could have spent that extra money on. 
    For this week, don’t go out of your way to alter your driving habits. Drive as you normally would. This challenge is meant to bring about self awareness. When the week has come to an end, that will be the time for reflection and figuring out what you can do better. If you want, you can continue to keep logs over the next couple of weeks to see if your ideas for improvement really will help reduce the gas you use and the money you spend.
    I wanted to provide an example of a log to help clear up any questions and to provide mock examples for improvement. So, here is Johnny Appleseed’s driving log for one day:
Johnny’s car = A, Mrs. Appleseed’s car = B, Johnny’s best friend’s car = C

Date	Start Place	End Place	Miles Between	Car	MPG	Gallons Used	Cost of gas/gallon	Money spent
4/2/13	Johnny’s House	Best Friend’s	6	A	25mpg	.24	$3.86	$0.93
4/2/13	Best Friend’s	Golf Course	20	C	18mpg	1.11	$3.86	$4.29
4/2/13	Golf Course	Best Friend’s	20	C	18mpg	1.11	$3.86	$4.29
4/2/13	Best Friend’s	Johnny’s House	6	A	25mpg	.24	$3.86	$0.93
4/2/13	Johnny’s House	Grocery Store	8	B	23mpg	.35	$3.86	$1.35
4/2/13	Grocery Store	Johnny’s House	8	B	23mpg	.35	$3.86	$1.35
Total for 4/2			68			3.4	$3.86	$13.14

    So, what could Johnny Appleseed have done better for this one day of driving? Try to think of some yourself before you read my answers.




Improvements:

•     Johnny could have offered to pick his best friend up and drive them to the golf course in his car, instead of using his friend’s car, because Johnny’s car gets better gas mileage.

•     Instead of going home from the golf course, and then going back out to the grocery store later, Johnny could have stopped at the store on his way home from the golf course. Not only would this reduce the miles he traveled, but Johnny would have also been using his car, which gets slightly better mileage than his wife’s.

    So, instead, Johnny’s day could have gone like this:

Date	Start Place	End Place	Miles Between	Car	MPG	Gallons Used	Cost of gas/gallon	Money spent
4/2/13	Johnny’s House	Best Friend’s	6	A	25mpg	.24	$3.86	$0.93
4/2/13	Best Friend’s	Golf Course	20	A	25mpg	.8	$3.86	$3.09
4/2/13	Golf Course	Best Friend’s	20	A	25mpg	.8	$3.86	$3.09
4/2/13	Best Friend’s	Grocery Store	2	A	25mpg	.08	$3.86	$0.31
4/2/13	Grocery Store	Johnny’s House	8	A	25mpg	.32	$3.86	$1.26
Total for 4/2			56			2.24	$3.86	$8.65

    If Johnny had done this instead, he would have driven twelve miles less, used 1.16 less gallons of gas, and saved $4.49. That may not seem like a lot, but if he saved that much a day for a whole week, that’s $31.43. That’s enough for him and Mrs. Appleseed to go out for a decent dinner. Johnny could buy himself a new video game with that much money, or a few new books to read.
    At the end of this week, if you would like to share your driving log and ideas for improvement with Viridorari, you can contact me at viridorari@yahoo.com. Do you have ideas for future challenges? Are you interested in being a Guest Writer? Email me, or leave a comment below. Come back on Monday for “Ecofriendly Economics” and the “ Harsh Facts of the Week.”

Animal of the Month Update

 

Picture courtesy of: http://www.sandiegocountynews.com/2012/06/20/meryl-streep-receives-snow-leopard-for-her-birthday/

Snow leopard cubs are blind and completely helpless at birth. They weigh between eleven and twenty ounces and are born with a thick coat of fur. Their eyes open after about a week, they begin to walk at five weeks, and their mother weans them off her milk by ten weeks. Snow leopard cubs become independent from their mother between eighteen and twenty-two months of age. After they leave their mother, they travel incredible distances to find their own territory and hunting grounds. Snow leopards are sexually mature between two and three months of age, and in the wild they can live to be eighteen years old. In captivity, they can live to be twenty-one years old. 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_leopard#Reproduction_and_life_cycle