Should I be ashamed to say....

[tulip]

Jeez, if I listened to the media or some people I am the reason there is a hole in the ozone, water is in short supply and trash not biodegrading.

We all are the reason.

[Crankin]

My husband still has his Lexus SUV. Of course, he bought a Miyata to compensate for the crappy gas mileage. The Miyata gets 30 mpg, so he uses it most of the year, but it gets parked in the winter, when it's snowy or icy. We still use the SUV for hauling around 4 bikes, a canoe, 4 people, and luggage quite a few times during the year. Also, we use it for hauling landscaping and home repair stuff. Around here, it's not so much that you need a truck, but you need a car with 4 wheel drive or AWD. I just happen to have a smaller sedan with AWD. Now I know some people get a long perfectly fine without all wheel drive, but personally, I won't drive in the winter without it. When my driveway, which is a 15% grade, is covered with snow with 2 inches of ice below it, I need all the help I can get, especially the cool "descending" assist that guides you down a steep and slippery hill without having to put your foot on the gas.
Other than the Lexus, we are pretty green around our house. We recycle, bring our own bags to the grocery store, and have had all the windows replaced in our house to cut fuel usage (it really worked). I have cut my driving tremendously, not so much because I am commuting, although I do do some errands by bike, but because I have really stopped going places far away for shopping. Everything I do is within a 7-8 mile radius. I take the train to my classes, so I only drive 8 miles round trip on those days. But, even when I was driving to work, I still drove way less than most of my peers. My car is 5.5 years old and has 40,000 miles on it.

[Tuckervill]

(Oh, I wish I could have a car with low mileage! My 2 yo Element rolled over 63,000 on my trip east last month.)

We have an energy saving car in the driveway, a '96 Honda Civic that belonged to my middle son and is now my youngest's, who is still too young to drive it. We keep it insured and licensed so we can have a car for zipping around town. It gets 38 mpg, still, at its age.

My husband is very tall, with flexibility issues in his hips, so our cars will always have to accommodate that. I wanted a Honda Fit but he doesn't fit. He fits in the Civic, and can drive it, but it is uncomfortable. He fits in the Element, but doesn't like to drive it. All of our cars need to be usable by him--you never know when we may be down to one car.

His personal vehicle is an F150, his first truck. Before that he drove big sedans, like a Grand Marquis. The truck and the sedans get roughly the same gas mileage (and they're making the sedans smaller now), so we might as well have a truck, which is more useful. I don't feel guilty about it. His hips will disable him some day, and there's no reason for him to be uncomfortable while he drives.

Me, on the other hand--I drive 5 miles below the speed limit to save gas, and got my Element up to 28 mpg on this last trip!

Karen

[Pax]

I got 92mpg on my scooter last week...as opposed to the crappy 16mpg I got shopping with my Jeep. I'm going to try to ride that dang scooter until it snows!

[Aggie_Ama]

Well my car was purchased in April 2006 and has 55,000 miles on it. We travel, a lot. In a good month we are home less weekends than we are gone, it makes us happy. Happy people are healthier, right? The truck has 18,000 on it but we did 3,000 miles of that on trips the car would not have been appropriate for. Of course his last truck started to get 18-22 mpg after he broke the engine in (after 30k) so we are hoping that might happen. The fuel displacement on the Dodge Hemi is a load of BS for fuel savings though (changes to 4 cylinder on the highway).

My husband is 6'2" so truly most fuel efficient cars will not work for him comfortably. He drives the Caliber but he has to put the seat completely back and only have 1" clearance for his head. Me? I could drive a mousetrap since I stopped growing at 12 (a towering 5'2").

[sundial]

I'm going to try to ride that dang scooter until it snows!

LOL!

Newspaper......I'm going to cancel my subscription. The writing is horrible.
And may as well cancel cable t.v. too. Oh wait, can't get ABC on the dish network. Gotta watch LOST you know.

[crazybikinchic]

I love driving a truck. I will drive a truck over a car any day. I do not like having to crawl out of a car when I can step out of a truck.

Trucks are fun

[coyote]

I haven't had to drive a car to work in close to 10 years. I do drive on the weekends but I do so little driving now it is not comfortable. I would love to do all my weekend errands on the bike but I haven't convinced my DH yet. So, that will come one of these days in the future.

[emily_in_nc]

My guilty "pleasure" (tho it's certainly not that): a 60-mile round-trip commute to work. I do work at home once a week when I am able to, but I still feel bad driving that much. And we drive to our sailboat, 3.25 hours each way, for vacations. Bad, but not as bad as the pre-boat vacations we used to take, which usually involved driving to Florida, New England, and such.

DH and I try to make up for our carbon footprint by recycling ferociously, using compact fluorescents all over the house (the newer ones really do have a warmer light, I was surprised), re-using as much as possible, not purchasing junk we don't need, composting, growing some of our own veggies, buying locally whenever possible, and all that good stuff. But I sure wish I could bike to work. Hopefully someday -- our life-long goal is to be car-free eventually.

[GLC1968]

My guilty pleasure is paper towels. When I'm working in the kitchen, I can go through scary amounts of them. I can't help it, I hate cloth towels in the kitchen. The other day I realized that it's gotten even worse now that we process raw dairy and have been doing so much canning. I have to be virtually bad bacteria free in those tasks, so it's worse than usual.

I am torn between using recycled paper towels that only come in the big size or using non-recycled paper towels that are cut into smaller sheets so I use much less.

I do recycle just about everything that I can't compost. Our trash bin is small and we don't even fill it every week. 95% of our lights are CF, all our windows are new, we just bought a smaller older house, we updated the insulation and weather-proofed the outside, I just sold my Prius (one less car on the road!), we grow about 20% of our own food and are working on getting that to 80% (organically), I don't fly, I bike to work when I can and if not, we carpool... I'm really, really good - but I do have a paper towel problem.

[OakLeaf]

Marcal paper towels (available at Staples) are 100% recycled, a large proportion post-consumer, and they come in the half sheets. The TP is a little rough, but it's fine for me. As long as I don't have food poisoning (ok sorry TMI).

Yeah, canning. I like to have home grown and home-preserved produce, but I'm under no illusions that home canning is environmentally friendly. The energy inefficiency is pretty much staggering, actually. A couple of paper towels to wipe the jar rims doesn't amount to much when you're leaving two burners on the stove maxed for four or five hours... never mind the water consumption.

[GLC1968]

Marcal paper towels (available at Staples) are 100% recycled, a large proportion post-consumer, and they come in the half sheets. The TP is a little rough, but it's fine for me. As long as I don't have food poisoning (ok sorry TMI).

Yeah, canning. I like to have home grown and home-preserved produce, but I'm under no illusions that home canning is environmentally friendly. The energy inefficiency is pretty much staggering, actually. A couple of paper towels to wipe the jar rims doesn't amount to much when you're leaving two burners on the stove maxed for four or five hours... never mind the water consumption.

I disagree. I certainly don't use much water (I recycle the canner water over and over again) and once we get our PV panels up, the electricty usage will be minimal. In the meantime, I am only doing waterbath canning so it's like 40 minutes including warm up time, tops. I then keep the pot warm with towels while I'm prepping the next load instead of running the stove. I also use the crock pot whenever possible (for apple butter and the like) instead of heating up the stove. Everything else I use is hand powered (peelers, food mill, etc). It takes awhile, but it's not exactly a fast process anyway.

I guess my thought is that while the action of canning using power grid electricity may not be environmentally friendly in and of itself, if you compare it to the mass-produced canned goods shipped from somewhere else in the world, it's a step in the right direction. It's local, it's fresh and it's organically/sustainably grown. Plus, the more food I put up now, the less travel I'll have to do in order to eat come December. Way less fossil fuels burned in the long run...at least, that's what I'm thinking.

Thanks for the tip on the Marcal towels. I'll have to see if we have a local Staples!

[tulip]

GLC, I wouldn't worry about your use of paper towels with all the other things you are doing right. Funny, though, I had the paper towel thought today, too. I like Bounty, I don't like flimsy paper towels that just don't pick up!

[sundial]

I had a brief moment of guilt when I looked at my trash that was full of disposed shop towels. I don't like using rags when I paint and use those tough blue shop paper towels. Guess I'm a member of the paper towel club.

[Kvixen23]

I generally don't feel guilty about too much.If you can afford it, who cares? Life is too short to feel guilty.

My sentiments exactly!!!

I have an F150, V8 that is monstrous and gets crumby gas mileage. I love her though. I can't imagine not having her in my life.....

I tried to commute on my bike for several weeks earlier in the year. It just didn't work. The roads here are horrendous, especially the main road I have to take to get to work. So, I take comfort in the fact that it is only 5 miles (one way) to work and I don't go anywhere during lunch unless I absolutely have to.