Two days with the Chevy Volt #voltKlout
Last week I was able to redeem one of my perks on Klout.com to test drive the Chevrolet Volt (#voltklout) for a few days. I get it, why wouldn’t they want a sustainably-minded blogger writing about the car they are billing as a highly fuel efficient machine?
However, I have to look at the Volt from two perspectives – the one where I am genuinely interested in it as a car (I like cars, a lot) and one where I am looking at it as a environmental blogger. One perspective fares slightly better than the other.
As a car, the Volt is fine. The electric engine picks up when you need it to and the car does really well for turning and handling. Lots of climate control features, XM radio, a DVD player and all the bells and whistles that seem to come with a mid-range sedan nowadays. Backseats fold down to provide a pretty expansive storage area – big enough for two carefully-stacked bikes.
Drawbacks for this car? It feels like one enormous blind spot. Maybe this comes from a lifetime of driving cars that are slightly longer (trucks, mostly) and maybe there isn’t a fear that my mirrors aren’t showing all there is to see. But every lane change and turn required a stretch of my neck just to make sure I wasn’t going to have to buy this car.
Plastic hoods over the engine, abandon hope all ye who enter here.
The other drawback I noticed is how stupidly reliant this car is on its own technology. For example – there is no spare tire. Looking under the hood, there also isn’t much in terms of access to any of the guts of the car (I looked, even though the Chevy rep told me not to). Any and all vehicular emergencies are received by the push of the On-Star button.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think this is a pretty terrible way to approach a broken car.
This display tells you where the energy is coming from/going to
As an environmentally-minded writer and a man who is interested in anything that would relive us of the petrochemical shackle? I don’t think the Volt is a step in the right direction.
Clearly the Volt was designed around the idea that most trips from the house are about 30 miles, round trip. That’s exactly how long the battery-power lasted on the Volt before it dripped to zero. After that the fuel engine kicked in and for the reminder of my time with the Volt, I was essentially driving a gasoline powered car. During that time, however, the almost-to-helpful computer of the car gave me subtle hints on how I could improve my driving habits to be a more fuel efficient driver – giving me clues about the traffic ahead and a whole on-screen tutorial about not being a jackrabbit accelerator.
Why didn’t I plug it in? Great question. Until I had this car at my disposal I was never aware of how infrequently I parked near a power outlet. The Volt can charge off a 120 volt outlet (like any of the ones in your house). But since I have no garage and park on the street, that wasn’t an option. During the day while I was at work, my parking options were also limited. Furthermore, to get a worthwhile charge, my car needed to be parked near an outlet for about 7-8 hours. I did have the option of parking near an electric car charging port (there were a few in Boulder), I still had to keep it parked for more than a few hours, and just about every kiosk I drove by asked me to keep my parking time to under an hour.
It was not in the cards for me to plug in this car. This car was clearly not meant for me; maybe for the folks who live out in the burbs with a garage at their disposal.
The Volt doesn’t tell you how much fuel you have left in the car (like a classic gas gauge would). Instead, it gives you an approximation of how much farther you can go before you either have to charge or fill up with gasoline. I had to do a little digging to find out that the Volt has a 9 gallon fuel tank. Honestly, for being able to get 350-370 miles on a 9 gallon tank – I’m sort of impressed. However, the reliance on the outlet (and the fossilized fuels that are burned to power that outlet) the Volt is actually a major turn off. Although, while I was never near an outlet, I was able to add some power back to the battery through the car’s Regenerative Power Recovery system – energy reclaimed through coasting and braking. The energy reclaimed on a downhill coast was quickly applied to assist the engine through the next gas-guzzling uphill climb. Smart.
Regen Power Recovery
Other discussions I could be having about this car, but won’t (for the moment) – The resale value of an electric car after 5 years. The immense amount of toxicity that is in an electric car’s battery. How well this silly car probably won’t do in the Colorado winters.
What experiences have you had with driving or owning electric and hybrid cars? Thoughts go into the comments below!
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The Generosity of Seeds
I found and posted this video the other day on the Not Quite Hippie Tumblr and it spread like wildfire through the blogosphere. I’m reposting it here because I think it has an extremely important message and is beautifully made.
Claire from Compeller Pictures on Vimeo.
Right now all of our seeds are germinating. Our indoor seed trays are packed with new life as hundreds of seeds soften, take root, and start producing their first leaves. It is exciting to watch. I feel thankful that these seeds are able to do so much with so little. One seed, a bit of soil and water, and in a few months I will have more food than I know what to do with. I give this seed the most basic, elemental essentials and it provides me with flavors and nutrients I’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
The above clip comes by way of the Untitled GMO Film Project that I have been following via Kickstarter for some time now (if the clip speaks at all to the rest of the film, then we are in for a treat). Our narrator - Claire – takes us through a garden and shows us plants in the autumn just before they produce and send off hundreds, thousands of seeds. These seeds are the very definition of generous. Before the plant dies for the season, it gives off thousands of copies of itself not only so it can live on as a species, but so we can also enjoy their fruits in future generations as well.
If only we could all be as selfless as seeds.
With the arrival of spring everyone is outside more. Many are landscaping their yards, washing their cars, planting gardens and all around enjoying the wonderful weather. In my neighborhood, we didn’t see much of the other people living here during the winter. No one was out on bicycles, but cooped up in cars instead. Windows weren’t open, we couldnt’ hear the conversations going on all around us. Plans were detered or modified based on the snow and ice and cold temperatures and, overall, we saw less of our friends. For the first time in a long time, I understood the idea of “hibernation.” A hibernation also felt by seeds after they give way in the fall.
What are you learning from the seeds? How will you spread generosity this season?
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read moreReader Question – Being green on a budget
Received a question via Tumblr this week:
“Hey there, I really want to start being more green. I do your typical recycling public transit and am vegetarian, but feel that I could do more. Thing is, I’m a college student so money is definitely not bountiful and I live in the city so not much room for gardening other than my little window box and terrariums. Any tips or suggestions for me?”
I get this sentiment a lot from people I talk to. They feel as though just because they don’t have a cozy five-acres off the grid somewhere, then their ability to be green is rather limited. Frankly, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
from Lexicon of Sustainability
The trick is to be conscious of your consumption and waste streams. The less you acquire, the less resources are consumed. The less that is consumed, the less that is wasted and thrown away. The number one key to green is being conscious of the fact that everything came from somewhere and everything has to go somewhere. In between these two destinations is the incredibly brief (by comparison) time that you are in ownership of that item.
Of course, consuming and throwing away things is a part of the world we live in. Even those that live off the grid consume and dispose – they just do it on a scale that is sustainable within the infrastructure they have to work with. Applying the same thinking, no matter what your address is, can do wonders.
So what is a college-student/ urban dweller to do?
Here are a few ideas:
Indoor composting: vermicomposting uses the power of eartworms to break down organic materials into compost. If done properly, it’s hardly noticeable and every few weeks you get compost! Vermicompost kits are for sale all over the place. Some blogs and websites have make-your-own worm-bin designs. Compost Revolution is also doing some pretty cool stuff.
There is always somewhere to garden. Whether it is a collection of buckets in the corner of a parking lot or an empty patch of dirt between the sidewalk and the street. If you have sunlight, soil, and water, you have opportunity to grow. Ask neighbors who have yards for a bit of space and offer them some of the harvest in return. I feel, as a culture, we have reached a point where a public-facing garden isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so long as it is kept up.
Shop the local farmer’s markets. There’s always good deals on fresh, responsible produce. Many are willing to haggle or barter for products. Ride your bike. Bring your own bags. Bring a date and turn them onto shopping local and fresh.
Lastly: ease your addiction to plastics. This is definitely the most challenging, but plastics are in everything and get everywhere. The percentage of plastic that is actually recycled is abysmal (only about %30, according to Recycle Across America), the rest isn’t broken down properly and ends up in the worst imaginable places (like, our food supply) or becomes a nation-sized island in the middle of the Pacific. Plastics are one of those cruel ironies that are cheap enough to be disposable, but durable enough to last forever.
Consider using glass for food storage, buy in bulk when you can, and go out of your way to remove disposable plastics from your life completely.
What are some ways you take the extra step to live greener?
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Talking trash – ranting about garbage
Labels from Recycle Across America
Earlier this week I attended the Green Schools National Conference. While there I talked with teachers and community leaders about some of the great progresses that were being made to make school buildings greener, to install school gardens and outdoor learning areas, and how classroom cirriculums were being modified to teach students to think sustainably.
In the expo hall, I found a booth where I got to talk about trash. Turns out, I really like talking about trash.
The folks were from Recycle Across America- a non profit that was taking the mostly-noble cause of clearly labeling trash bins. And, yes, it’s a cause worth paying some attention to. In fact, of the fifty or so businesses represented in the business hall, there were about 7 or 8 that were dedicated just to waste management and about half of those booths were just about providing students a more informed or entertaining idea of throwing away things.
Recycle Across America aims to remove the extra minute of anguish that comes from “properly” disposing of your waste. 8 different types of plastic, tin vs. aluminum, what is actually compostible? Thanks to the 30+ stickers they’ve designed to be attached to waste bins, there are fewer questions.
Trash? or Landfill?
Curious how their “Trash” sticker doesn’t say “trash” , but “landfill.” As in, this is not trash, this going to the landfill. Across the hall in the convention center, their waste bins were similar in concept. There was talk about how many people actually make the effort to recycle (and yes, it’s an effort), what happens to our recycling after the truck hauls it off, and what steps really need to be taken to reduce waste and reclaim resources.
All of it made me think, yet again, about the waste that we produce. It boggles my mind that we have landfills – entire tracts of land that is just garbage. There are companies that make things just to be thrown away.
Denver recently went through a bunch of ideas on how to fix up the budget, one solution was to shift the burden of the waste management bill to the residents. Pay for trash pickup (opposed to the general tax fund that waste management currently comes out of) naturally rattles a lot of cash-strapped residents. I think private trash pickup would be a step in the right direction to trimming our waste stream and being more conservative with what we throw away.
Currently, in Denver, trash collection happens in a mess of dumpsters spriknled in alleyways all over the city. Anyone can pretty much throw anything in them. Recycling happens, and is also free, but only if the resident makes the effort to ask for it. Composting is on a pilot-program on a block-by-block basis and it has a small fee attached to it. Generally, anyone in Denver can throw anything away at any time, for free.
But if we paid for it? So many awesome things could happen. Not only would we be more conscious of what we were tossing out, but also of what we were purchasing and bringing in. If we paid for it, then everyone could compost at a municipal capacity!
I’d be all for the company that goes the step beyond just “waste management” and started calling their service something like “resource reclamation.”
Reuse paper!
In the convention center bathrooms, they ask for only paper towels to go into certain bins so they can be composted and turned into something else. I wonder if I gave them that idea?
And, lastly, something silly from the folks over at Portlandia
read moreChallenges of winter sustainability
Our preserve shelf. Half empty.
Potato growing box (click image for full directions)
