I heard that by buying a new Prius, you are doing more damage eco-wise than continuing to use your worn, but not-worn-out, SUV. It has something to do with the energy used to produce a Prius -- supposedly it will take you seven years to break even. Is this true?
-Conley
Well, yes and no. There are a few different issues at play here that I need to address in order to accurately answer your question.
The first is the oft-repeated myth that a Hummer is actually greener than a Prius, once you factor in the energy expended over the car's total life cycle, including manufacturing and disposal. This stemmed from a 2006 report entitled "Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles from Concept to Disposal," by Oregon-based CNW Marketing Research, an outfit of suspect funding and origins (the website lists a P.O. box as the company's address, and states that its "various operations -- call centers, data center, field offices -- are off limits"). The report claimed that the Hummer came out ahead, but real scientists -- including those at the nonpartisan Pacific Institute and the Rocky Mountain Institute, which used the GREET life cycle model developed by the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory for its analysis -- were quick to debunk CNW's conjecture and flawed science (the Hummer was assumed to last 35 years in the CNW study). Nevertheless, the rumor has stuck - probably because it is so counter to all the science out there that the media and well-intentioned chain mail circulators have glommed onto it.
There is some truth, however, to the idea that you have to account for the carbon cost of manufacturing a car before you can assess its true environmental benefits. For the Prius, according to Wired magazine, you'd have to drive 46,000 miles (likely achieved far sooner than the seven years you cite) before you'd "pay off" its initial 113 million BTU energy cost.
If you have the funds, then by all means, trade in your SUV for a Prius -- you'll be helping the environment by eventually reducing your carbon footprint and by increasing market demand for innovative, fuel-efficient cars. But interestingly, according to that same Wired article, the best choice of all (both financially and eco-wise) may be to trade in your inefficient SUV for a used car that gets great mileage. And while you certainly won't get as many nods driving a 1994 Geo Metro XFi as you would with a new loaded solar-roof Prius (though you may get as many looks), I will grant you more green bragging rights.
My daughter keeps bugging me to use a filtered pitcher for water at home instead of buying bottled water (and I'd like to oblige), but what about all of those plastic filters? I can recycle plastic bottles, but don't those filters just wind up in the landfill?
-Dan
Cheers to you for listening to your daughter: The Container Recycling Institute estimates that so far this year, over 136 billion beverage cans and bottles have been landfilled, littered, and incinerated in the US alone; according to Earth911.com, only 24 percent of plastic bottles are actually recycled. So switching to a reusable pitcher will go a long way toward reducing waste, not to mention the millions of barrels of oil that are required to manufacture all that plastic to begin with.
But I digress; what about those filters? Thanks largely to the Take Back the Filter campaign, which petitioned Clorox, the maker of Brita, to find a recycling solution for its filters, the water filtration behemoth teamed up with eco-friendly household product maker Preserve (a neat company, I might add; I'm a big fan of its toothbrushes manufactured from recycled yogurt cups) to collect and recycle its pitcher filters. The resulting Preserve Gimme 5 recycling program ("5" refers to the No. 5 plastic, polypropylene, used to make the filters), which began in January, allows customers to drop off their used filters at participating Whole Foods locations or mail them back to Preserve. Click here to learn more about the program and to find a drop-off bin near you.
Send all your eco-inquiries to Jennifer Grayson at eco.etiquette@gmail.com. Questions may be edited for length and clarity.
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ONLY If the Hummer is destroyed like the "Cash 4 Clunkers" cars are. If not, than it is just break even or worse. If the dealer re-sells your gas hog Hummer, it won't solve anything as far as emissions being reduced. Most people want the trade in for their Hummer and are not going to take it out in the desert and shot it up so nobody can drive it again.
Best to trade it in now on the "Cash4 Clunker". Find your friends with Hummers and tell them to DUMP it now! But, they most likely can get more on a trade in.
They could also upgrade the engine on the Hummer so it runs Bio Diesel/Diesel or Ethanol. Lot of conversion kits out there. Shop around. Some of these kits are WAY overpriced and made for super performance.
http://green.autoblog.com/2006/11/03/hummer-owners-can-easily-switch-to-biodiesel-hydrogen-and-propa/
I realize some of the old Mercedes don't have airbags or ant-lock brakes (still these are widely considered to be safe and well made cars), but the VW's have all the modern safety features if that's what you're looking for. Another advantage of the old Merc's is their relatively low running costs, they're easy to fix and parts are widely available.
Thanks for the info on the Gimme 5 program.
Non surprising that didn't make it into your report.
The Prius is not "green" Its marketing hype to the idiot masses(especially those sheep in California).
Whats green is to invest in home carbon reduction as well as your car reduction. Bike to work when feasible, buy a 5 year old car that gets at least 30 mpg hwy. Use bamboo for your house flooring. Use ultra efficient washer and an outdoors close hanger to dry when seasonal. There are hundreds of more ways to reduce your dependence on foreign oil than buy a Prius for the same cost.
http://www.nickelinstitute.org/index.cfm/ci_id/12916/la_id/1.htm
I'm not saying that a Prius is environmentally perfect, and of course it would be better for the environment if everyone biked to work and/or used the money they would have spent on a Prius to install solar panels at home. But the question was about debunking the myth that a Prius is somehow worse for the environment than an SUV or Hummer, which it is not. Here's an article that breaks it down mathematically:
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200711/mrgreen_mailbag.asp
We have a choice as a society: We can either move the market toward the super-efficient cars of the future by embracing innovative companies and their products, even if they haven't yet achieved environmental perfection, or we can stick our heads in the sand and wish that we'll somehow miraculously get from Point A to Point B with no evolution in between.
For example, the article's author states, "There is some truth, however, to the idea that you have to account for the carbon cost of manufacturing a car before you can assess its true environmental benefits."
This sentence conflates carbon footprint with all environmental issues.
The manufacture of an automobile includes environmentally hazardous wastes that are gaseous, liquid and solid and therefore typically pollute the air, water and soil. Further, these wastes are not directly comparable with each other - proverbial apples and oranges. Also ignored here were questions of pollution from spare parts manufacture. And lets not forget other direct costs like transportation (shipping the vehicle or its spares to point of sale) and other indirect costs like the pollution generated by the employees going to work to build the things - (some societies pollute more than others in this regard).
While there are other factors other people have cited here, such as public transportation, etc, if lots of assumptions were assumed, say average life of a vehicle is 250,000 miles, average fuel economy is 22mpg, etc, etc, etc, one could possibly come up with some rough estimate of the true trade-off, but it doesn't actually help people as the assumptions that make it possible to calculate something also make it unrealistic for nearly all specific cases.
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What I was about to add was something like:
All that said, it's probably the case that it would be an environmental win if the the average SUV in the USA at about half its projected life were scrapped and replaced with any vehicle getting 30 MPG or better - and by scrapped I mean taken off the road permanently, not merely passed on to someone else to drive.
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I always love the qualifier in a debate "an outfit of suspect funding and origins "
This phrase mitigates a debate and renders all of the following writing suspect. ughhh Which means the person writing the article feels less than qualified or is too lazy to research the problem.
Individuals driving alone in automobiles are the problem organizing a society so one is driving 75 miles a day or more is the problem. Prius vs SUV is really skirting the issue and does little to address the underlying problems with a 367 million gallon a day gasoline habit.
We need to up the number of trips and errands NOT taken by car to 40 or 50% not our current 20% .
Now that would be green change, Savings we could leave as an enormous gift to our children and the planet.
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If you drive only 2000 or 3000 miles per year then keeping your old car creates less negative environmental impact than buying a new one. This calculation will change when we start having $10,000 plug-in town cars.
Also, don't negate a new car warranty --- most new cars get a ton of free regular maintenance, free road service and lengthy warranties. That's tough to discount or ignore.
These "hybrids/EVs are just as bad as Hummers" canards come from those who don't want to see any change in the status quo. Also, people who think, "it's hopeless anyway, so why even try to improve things with a Prius?" Well, we HAVE to start somewhere and Prius ... and other hybrids ... are good places to start. The coming EVs will be even better ...
I once drove a Geo Metro round-trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and back on one tank of gas, a stunt for the TV show I was on then (KTLA MORNING NEWS in Los Angeles). It took some work - spent most of the time drafting big rigs from 5' behind.But what a scary, powerless car! I once wrote that "the Geo Metro Turbo (or was it the Sprint?) is the perfect car for your teenage daughter --- if you want to kill your teenage daughter."
Steve
There are so many factors involved in purchasing a vehicle. If you're going to be ecoconscious, it's obvious that you don't buy a vehicle until the old one is past redemption. Then you buy the vehicle that suits your needs best, without regard for ego or status. The green choice is always going to be a used vehicle, because new vehicles come with a huge carbon footprint and cost far more than they are worth to the consumer.
Luckily, most people do not have the luxury of wondering if a Prius is better than an SUV. They simply drive what they can afford in the most sensible manner possible. Keeping whatever vehicle you have tuned up, tire pressures correct, etc. will go a long way toward being green no matter what you're driving. Planning trips and combining trips is also something we can all start doing immediately.