greenHo.ws

No oil change for today’s cars can truly be green, as there is always some waste generated.  However, you can minimize the impact by taking a few steps (recycling oil, capturing waste, etc.).  Just like everyone else, business that provide car maintenance services are feeling the pressure to reduce their impact on the environment.

When your car is up for regular service, take a look at AAMCO Eco-Green Certified centers.  I have not tried them myself, but they have some pretty impressive claims.  For example:  “you’ll extend the time between oil changes up to 5 TIMES versus traditional tune-ups.”  It would definitely be worth while to compare the cost of this service to regular service, especially with the potential time savings from fewer oil changes.

Unfortunately, there are no Eco-Green certified centers near me.  If you try an AAMCO green service, post a comment here and let us know how it goes, what they charge, etc.

I have to give props to Publix.  If you don’t know them, Publix is a large chain of grocery stores.  We shop there regularly, at home and often while traveling.  Every Publix that we have visited has a recycling center at the front of the store.

They make it easy and obvious to recycle their bags, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time being green.  They even have a well written corporate policy on the environment. 

But what about other stores?

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Greenman will tell you about this pile of electronics I used to have: old monitors, outmoded PCs, discarded cell phones, even first generation MP3 players and PDAs. It was never easy to part with old equipment, but the pile shrunk. As it did, we gained back closet space.

Most of the time, the old hardware was donated to someone who was a few generations behind in technology. Some of the time, the hardware went to charities. Occasionally, it even went in the trash (I am embarrassed to say).

We’re now going through our annual rite of purging, and I’ve found a new option for used electronics and gadgets.

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There is so much news about how to save energy, be green, and use fewer resources in general, it’s hard to know where to start. So, to pull a few tips together, I perused a few green sites, racked my brains, pinged a few friends, then finally asked my wife for a few good and relatively new ideas.

I got lots of ideas. Before I share the new ones, here are three popular ideas that are not new, but always worth repeating. Hopefully you’ve heard them before:

1. Swap your old technology, incandescent light bulbs out for new CFL light bulbs. There is lots of information about CFLs on Wikipedia and a nice writeup on Consumer Reports.
2. Minimize shower time. We’ve all heard the jokes about “shower with a friend,” which never gets old. Reality is that even with low flow showerheads, showering still uses a lot of water. So, keep it short or share it with a friend.
3. Get a ride from someone or offer to drive. This is especially true in bigger cities where traffic is insane (Atlanta), but holds true everywhere. Even if you live in a smaller town, remember that pollution adds up.

These first few are a nice start with lots of information widely available. Here are five more ideas that are much less publicized:

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We too often read stories about the elderly person or recluse with so many animals that authorities step in to rescue them. What the rescuers often find is a house or yard or barn so filled with waste it’s unusable, animals that are undernourished, and an overall unhealthy situation. We usually react with a little pity, a little sadness, a lot of disgust, but especially a feeling of “how in the world could someone let that happen?”

Here’s another question to ask: are we we doing the same thing to our home?

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