10 Every-Day Ways to Reduce Your Oil Use

By now, you’ve probably seen quite a few Gulf oil spill images depicting the environmental devastation caused by deep water oil exploration. Each picture speaks to the anger and sadness many of us feel about the situation. Yet each image also begs the questions, “Do my choices make a difference?” and “What can I do to help prevent future catastrophes?”

To quote the deeply inspirational Mahatma Gandhi, “It’s not too late at all. You just don’t yet know what you are capable of.”

In that vein, here are 10 every-day ways you can lessen your consumption of crude and lead a more sustainable life:

1. Skip the meat. Compared with plant crops, meat requires eight time the fossil fuels to produce. Following our current path, world meat consumption is expected to double by 2050. Imagine the impact this will have on oil demand if we don’t act today.
2. Drive less than 65 (or 60). In most cars, gas mileage drops off above 60 mph. Lower gas mileage translates to higher overall gas consumption. Try using cruise control when possible, which also helps to use your car’s overdrive gears, saving even more fuel.
3. Pack away plastic bags for good. Roughly 430,000 gallons of oil are used to produce 100 million plastic bags. And each year, 500 billion to 1 trillion of these bags are dispensed globally! Most bags are used only once and only a tiny fraction of them are recycled. Each bag counts.
4. Leave aggressive driving to someone else. Your car’s gas mileage can drop 33 percent on highways and 5 percent on city streets through swerving, sudden acceleration and braking. Revving your engine while stopped will cause your oil use to climb even more.
5. Live like a localvore. Since packaging and shipping food long distances requires lots of fossil fuel, buy locally grown food. What’s more, patronizing local businesses (like Greenerprinter!) keeps $0.43 of every $1.00 spent in the community, compared to only $0.13 out of $1.00 when you shop at a national chains!
6. Take the train. Most people fly or even drive across country at least once a year, yet few realize that trains have higher fuel efficiency per passenger than hybrid cars. Instead of the air or roads, choose rail for business shipping or personal travel when possible.
   
7. Don’t get hot under the collar. Wash your clothes on the cold or warm setting. Washing every load on the hot/warm cycle in a top loading machine (using an electric water heater) for just one year is equivalent to burning over 180 extra gallons of gas when you drive. Avoid the hot water cycle – your close will be just as clean and bright.
8. Wave goodbye to water bottles. Did you know that 17.6 million barrels of oil are used to produce the 28.6 billion PET water bottles manufactured in the U.S.? Or that roughly 86 percent of empty plastic water bottles (about two million tons of PET) lands in landfills instead of new plastic products?  Learn more through Food & Water Watch’s Take Back the Tap campaign.
   
9. Avoid idling. According to the Hinkle Charitable Foundation, the average driver wastes half a cup of gas per day for a small car or one cup for an eight-cylinder engine through five minutes of unnecessary idling. This works out to 10 gallons of gas for a small car or 20 gallons for a larger vehicle per year. If you need to idle longer than 10 seconds, cut the engine and cut your oil consumption.
10. Clean the old-fashioned way. Many commercial cleaning products (and many other every-day items, for that matter) are derived from petroleum. You don’t need oil to take grease out of your way. Use cleaning products made from natural materials such as vinegar, soap powder or baking soda. A quick web search will uncover many home-made cleanser recipes.

To round off this list, take one more step by sending a petition letter to your senator. Ask her or him to pass energy legislation that will prevent future oil spills. Big oil companies have a strong voice in the government. But through our collective voice and daily actions, we can all do right by the planet.