Mile after mile, trying to be Green

It's been a while since I posted to the blog. Vacation got in the way, but the trip provided opportunity to consider just what it means to be green while away from home. We drove a pretty fuel efficient SUV -- I know, can that even be possible? But when you're packing a teen and an adolescent who have grown up in today's society, squeezing them into the back of my Civic for 850 miles was not going to happen. Not if we all wanted to get there and back in one piece.

So while on the way we kept our use of bottled water to a minimum and while we certainly pushed the speed limit and a little more, we didn't load the roof rack with our luggage carrier so we kept the wind drag down. While I can't verify the science behind this website, www.metrompg.com demonstrated that a roof rack could reduce fuel efficiency measured in MPG by as much as 12 percent.

So the ride down the road was pretty green. But what about eating out and things like that? It's becoming more widely known that food production, transportation and packaging disposal are serious contributors to climate change and landfill use. So what's a green guy to do? Well, at least here in Virginia the state is trying to certify restaurants that claim to be green.

The Department of Environmental Quality is beginning to certify restaurants that claim to be green by requiring that they prove it based on a several criteria. The list of participating restaurants can be found here.