Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

The ULTIMATE (Eco) Chick-Mobile!

The second I saw this shot on the gas 2.0 page, I knew I wanted one! This has to be the coolest car ever! This is what I want for Christmas (or before, if possible, LOL).

The XR3 is a three-wheeled plug-in diesel hybrid, getting 225 mpg, or if you’re cruising on diesel alone, about 125 mpg.

From the original article by my friend and eco-car enthusiast, Jerry James Stone:

Introduced back in June of 2008, the two-passenger car was designed so it can be assembled using readily available parts. Fully constructed, the car weighs in at 1480 pounds and has top speed of 80mph. And while you can only get 40 miles out of its li-ion battery pack, it can be plugged into any standard wall socket.

More pix and info here.

Which Cars Win First Prize in Green? Greenopia's Got the Deets

Guest Post By Ayana Meade

According to the newly-released Greenopia Green Care Guide, the top three most eco-friendly cars on the market today are:
1. the Toyota Prius
2. the Honda Civic Hybrid
3. the Jetta Clean Diesel.

All three had incredibly high gas mileage and burned cleanly to boot. To see the top ten cars in the list, check this out, there’s some surprises in the full rundown!

Two pleasant surprises were the performances of Audi and Mazda. Both did relatively well in the Greenopia Automaker Guide (which rates the overall performance of auto manufacturers), as they both had a statistically large number of cars that met at least our minimum criteria for the Automobile Guide.

When buying your next car, keep in mind that just because a car is a hybrid doesn’t mean it’s automatically better for the environment. In fact, largely because of its battery, the hybrid carries a larger environmental production burden. Where the hybrid makes up ground is once it is driven, with its superior mileage and emissions. On balance Toyota estimates that it takes about 12,000 miles before a hybrid and a similar traditional engine car ‘break even’ environmentally (the hybrid is greener from that point on), as long as it gets great mileage and burns cleanly.

Since your choice of transportation is second only to your home’s energy use in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, driving less or not at all is of course the ideal way to reduce your carbon footprint, but if you’re like many and need a car to get around in today’s fast paced world, then this guide can help you choose wisely.

About the Greenopia Greener Cars Guide: The Guide uses Greenopia’s EPA-recognized 4-Leaf rating system, and only the top 100 automobiles readily available in the US made the cut—the good news is that they come in all kinds of price points and styles. Fuel-efficiency, manufacturing materials, EPA SmartWay vehicle emissions and proxy data representing manufacturing processes were among the criteria data that were analyzed by the Greenopia research team to come up with the ratings.

Fast Food Making Good-For-You Biodiesel?

Sporting green “veg” t-shirts and a positive outlook, they call themselves The Vegetable Energy Group, but they’re known simply as the “Veggie Girls” for short. The five shown here, all 18 year-old college students – Caitlyn Arigo, Audrey Faber, Rachel Lucas, Alyssa Tennant, and Aubrey Wynn – are on a mission to educate people about the benefits of alternative fuels and have fun along the way. Via: Greencar.com

Have any fast-food chains started making biodiesel from their used cooking oil? Is it difficult to do yourself?
—Amy Howard, Indianapolis, IN

Finally there’s a healthier side to the American love affair with fried food. The 4.5 billion gallons of fry oil annually left over from making those delicious greasy snacks that clog our arteries and add pounds to our hips could also cleanly power more than 10 percent of the nation’s diesel engines—more than 528,000 cars—for a year.

Matthew Howe, senior vice-president of McDonald’s UK, announced in 2007 that the company’s British fleet of 155 delivery trucks would switch to running on recycled vegetable oil collected from approximately 900 of the chain’s restaurants. McDonald’s spokespeople declined to answer whether the chain is considering something similar in this country. No other fast-food chain has made such an announcement (yet).

Even if burger chains aren’t pumping French fry fuel out back, some savvy fast-food purveyors have begun to show how it can be done. Robert Tomey, a McDonald’s franchisee in Amory, Mississippi, uses fry oil from his four stores to power his own VW Beetle and a Ford pickup truck. In addition to saving waste, biodiesel also scores points for being biodegradable, for creating almost no sulfur emissions (which cause acid rain), and for cutting hydrocarbon and particulate pollution from regular diesel emissions by up to half. Tomey says it has improved the performance of his vehicles, too.

David Hackleman, an engineering professor at Oregon State University who has driven cross-country in his fry oil–powered Dodge truck, says making your own fuel is simple—and costs only about a dollar a gallon. In addition to fast-food eateries, he recommends collecting grease from brewpubs and Japanese restaurants. With the proper know-how, do-it-yourselfers like him make their own fuel by mixing the collected oil with alcohol and lye, starting a chemical reaction that takes about an hour and a half to create biodiesel. The by-products are glycerine, an ingredient used in handmade soaps, and potassium hydroxide, sometimes used as fertilizer on farm fields. If making your own biodiesel sounds daunting (lye is corrosive, and the fumes from the chemical reaction can be dangerous if inhaled), Hack-leman advises letting someone else do the work. “People can also buy biodiesel from a commercial source,” he says. “It’s easier and encourages the growth of business.”

Originally printed as Starre’s “Green Guru” column for Audubon Magazine.

The War on Bugs

For anyone else who digs on books that examine how PR shapes public perception, Will Allen’s new book, The War on Bugs is the latest in a genre that includes The Best War Ever and Toxic Sludge is Good for You. Instead of the now-tired observation that much of our food supply harms our bodies and destroys the land, Allen looks at the historical connection between advertising and agriculture and how toxins were marketed and sold to farmers to create The War on Bugs. (Fans of The Lorax might be surprised to see how else Dr. Suess put his talents to work — shilling for DDT and Standard Oil — before he spoke for the trees.)

Here’s an excerpt from a Q&A with Will Allen that I did for Chelsea Green.

BG: You’re an organic farmer, but you’re also an ex-Marine – and you were arrested and sentenced to a year in jail during the early 70s for civil rights and antiwar activism. That’s not a one-track life. Were there noticeable turning points for you?

WA: A turning point for me came during my time in the Marine Corps when I was dispossessed of the belief that as Marines we were protecting democracy, liberty, and freedom. I learned we were mostly protecting corporations. Some of our military actions while I was a Marine were in Lebanon, Cuba, and Vietnam. In Lebanon, we protected American corporations in the mid-East and mid-East allies, no matter how corrupt. In Cuba, we protected American businesses, a dictator, the ruling class that fled to Miami after the Revolution, and the Mafia drug cartels. In Vietnam we protected business interests, rice interests, illegal drug interests – the opium trade – and religious interests. We installed a Catholic president in a nation where 95% of the population was Buddhist and were shocked when he was assassinated. By 1963, I was protesting the Vietnam War in Chicago rallies and campus teach-ins.

…

BG: Do you see any similarities in the way that wars are spun and sold to the American public and the ways that toxic chemicals are spun and sold to American farmers?

WA: Advertising agencies made a quantum leap during the First World War. They did contract work for the government to sell the war and recruitment work for the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The country was isolationist at the time and not interested in getting into another of Europe’s seemingly endless string of wars. Advertisers were able to get enlistments up and the public to buy war bonds. The themes were: a “can do attitude”, (such as, if America enters the war we will win it), a patriotic obligation, and protecting the civil rights of occupied countries.

When the same advertising agencies sold chemicals to farmers and householders, their pitches were similar. We are at war, be patriotic, and “a can do attitude.” That attitude encouraged such boasts as “. . .We can grow more than any other farmers in the world”, which led to the common belief that American farmers are feeding the world.

BG: On the flip side, do you see similarities in your resistance – resistance to war and resistance to toxic chemicals?

WA: I think that when someone becomes as anti-war as I am, then whatever one does – whether it is organic farming or something else – the irrationality and injustice of war is never far from their consciousness. While farm wars and military wars are of a different scale, many of the chemical and mining corporations that make fertilizer and pesticides are also manufacturers of bombs, and other military hardware and software. I think the sooner we can stop the chemical and genetic war on the farms, and the mindset that we are at war with nature, the better we will be as a species. In a sense, it is hard to not think of the war every time I fire up a tractor or pump or generator or heater that runs on gas or diesel from war zones around the world, especially Iraq. For that reason, we are looking at all the alternatives to fossil fuels for moving vehicles and for stationary heaters and generators.

War is not what is going on at Cedar Circle Organic Farm (in East Thetford, Vermont). We have struggles with pests, including woodchucks, voles, birds, worms, fungi, insects and weeds. We develop and copy strategies that are softer, non poisonous, and often very effective, and sometimes those adopted strategies are not effective. It is a process. We don’t have all the answers, but we have a lot more now than when we started in the 1960s.

How Green is Your Vote?

One of our readers pointed out a lack of political discourse on environmental issues. Earthlab has compiled a breakdown of what the candidates wish to accomplish with regard to the environment. Alex, thanks for bringing this up and for the link from earthlab!

2008 Presidential Candidates – Environment

Top Democrat Positions

Hillary Clinton
Clinton’s plans to tackle global warming revolve around her Strategic Energy Fund. She states that, “As a nation, it is time we take the giant leap in energy innovation we desperately need and that is exactly what the Strategic Energy Fund will do.” The fund sketches out a plan to inject $50 billion into research and development of renewable energy, clean coal technology, energy efficiency, ethanol and other “homegrown” biofuels. The fund draws revenue by eliminating oil companies’ tax breaks, making sure they pay their fair share for drilling operations on public lands, and encouraging them to either invest in renewable energy or pay into the fund directly. “By pursuing these opportunities, we can grow the economy and shrink our dependence on foreign oil. We can slow global warming and speed the creation of good new jobs. We can protect our security and protect our environment.”

Barack Obama
Obama’s proposal to reduce global warming involves the implementation of an economy-wide, market-based cap-and-trade system. “No business will be allowed to emit any greenhouse gases for free,” Obama states. “Businesses don’t own the sky, the public does, and if we want them to stop polluting it, we have to put a price on all pollution.” This ambitious cap-and-trade system will auction off 100 percent of emissions permits, making polluters pay for the CO2 they emit. The system also mandates the reduction of emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Obama plans on investing $150 billion in “climate friendly” energy supplies, such as ethanol, over the next ten years, while simultaneously maintaining and protecting the existing manufacturing base. “My general view is that we should experiment with all sorts of potential energy sources,” says Obama. “Don’t prejudge what works and what doesn’t, but insist that we have very strict standards in terms of where we want to end up, and enforce those standards vigorously.”

Top Republican Positions

Mitt Romney
When asked what he plans on doing about the global climate crisis, Romney’s answer is concise; “We’re going to get ourselves off foreign oil. And to do that it’s going to take nuclear power, clean coal, more efficient vehicles, and then we’re going to dramatically reduce our greenhouse gasses.” Romney emphasizes a push toward clean coal, alternative energy, and a greatly expanded nuclear power plan. “Instead of sweeping mandates, we must use America’s power of innovation to develop alternative sources of energy and new technology that use energy more efficiently.” Romney articulates that this technology includes the use of ethanol, but not exclusively. He plans to continue development of multiple energy sources within the U.S., including biodiesel, liquefied coal, offshore drilling, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,

John McCain
McCain believes that America’s economic and environmental interests are not “mutually exclusive, but rather inextricably linked.” His approach to global warming involves limiting carbon emissions by bringing nuclear energy to the forefront of the market, which will reduce America’s dependence on foreign supplies of energy. These concepts are outlined in his Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, along with his plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough to forestall catastrophic global warming. Implementing these reductions involves setting mandatory greenhouse gas pollution reductions in all major sectors of the U.S. economy, using free-market incentives to lower costs, and providing support for technology innovations. “Americans solve problems. We don’t run from them,” states McCain on the environmental page of his Web site. “Most, if not all of the ways that we can address this issue are through profit motive, free-enterprise-system-driven green technologies.”

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