First, I apologize to Doctor Seuss (and all of you) for my play on a "Green Eggs and Ham" rhyme in my title. All I can say is that I couldn't resist!
We are all moaning about high gasoline prices and how they are affecting us. A quick scan of Active Rain turns up blog posts on topics ranging from which small car to buy when trading in a gas guzzler (Meyer Leibovitch's "A Car Guy's Dilema") to how have the high gasoline prices affected how we view and conduct our business (Kim Daugherty's "Are Rising Gas Prices Affecting YOUR Business?"). We have gasoline nostalgia posts like Loreena Yeo's I remembered when gas was .... We even have AR community groups dealing with environmental and "green" topics such as ECO-All-Stars~ GREEN Resources, Trends & Friends and Healthy Lifestyle - Green Lifestyle and I guess my point is that as gasoline prices continue to rise these concerns and issues will become even greater.
In my 5 minutes of daily spare time I have come across a few items that have been in the news recently that I think are worth sharing and passing on as we focus on our driving in both our daily jobs and for the summer travel season. I have even included a suggestion regarding non-automobile gasoline use reduction.
When do you fill-up?
Fill up early in the morning or after sundown. Filling up mid-day, in the heat of the late morning or afternoon/evening will give you the least amount of gas for your dollar due to expansion of gas under heat. Plus more vapors will escape to hurt our air during the heat of the day too.
GO RIGHT! (...even if you are a liberal)
I thought that this was really interesting. UPS has determined that their fleet saves millions of dollars a year in fuel by making as few left turns as possible. Given that REALTORS® spend lots of time navigating around their areas behind the wheel it seems that we are a logical group that could benefit from better route planning. See if you can route your trips this way and you may not save millions of dollars like UPS, but collectively we probably would have a huge impact on gas usage and air pollution. As a group we can have a HUGE impact!
Lush Lawns
As REALTORS® we know all about the importance of curb appeal (and if we don't, we should). But could you survive if you asked your lawn service to come every other week instead of every week? Would an extra week make that much of a difference in exchange for a 50% reduction in lawn equipment related gasoline use and air pollution? And if you must have a weekly lawn mowing, does your landscape company offer a "green" service where they will cut your grass using manual or non-gasoline driven equipment? Lawn equipment is one of the biggest contributors to pollution.
OK folks, I am off my soapbox (painted green with no VOC paint). Enjoy and GO GREEN!
Steve Shatsky - Dallas Real Estate & Short Sale Specialist
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The underground storage tanks keep the gasoline at a pretty constant temperature. Not much savings to be had there...
The other points are ok...